THE  OPPORTUNITY  BOOKS 


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-AGrtlC  LXTDh 


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OPPORTUNITIES    IN    FARMING 


OPPORTUNITIES 
IN   FARMING 

By  EDWARD  OWEN  DEAN 


HARPER  &   BROTHERS 

Publishers  New  York  and  London 


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*>4 


MAIN  LIBKA*^    '  tw*-i.     mire  DEPT. 
Opportunities  In  Fabming 

Copyright,  ioio.  by  Harper  &   Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  March,  1019 

B-T 


CONTENTS 


CHi  P.  PAGE 

I.  Why  I  Am  a  Farmer 1 

II.  Farm  Opportunities 8 

III.  Where  to  Go — What  State 16 

IV.  Selecting  a  Farm 24 

V.  What  Line  of  Farming        33 

VI.  Crop  Diversification  and  Side-lines  .     .  43 

VII.  The  Farm  Its  Own  Fertilizer-Plant  .     .  52 

VIII.  Importance  of  Farm  Machinery      ...  62 

IX.  Education  and  Co-operation 71 

X.  Women  Farmers 83 

XI.  Work  of  the  Farm 91 


415784 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

In  Harvesting,  the  Labor-saving  Reaping- 
machine  Has  Proved  a  Great  Con- 
server  OF  TIME  AND  ENERGY    ....       Frontispiece 

A  Good  Type  of  Mountain  Farm    .     .     .  Facing  p.  20 

A  Well-kept  Apiary "  40 

One  of  the  Many  Uses  to  Which  a  Motor- 
tractor  May  Be  Put      ,,.,.,      "  64 


OPPORTUNITIES    IN    FARMING 


OPPORTUNITIES    IN 
FARMING 

i 

WHY  I   AM   A  FARMER 

"\^0U  have  been  on  the  farm  a  good 
I  many  years — what  is  the  attraction, 
anyway;  what  holds  you?"  Many  times 
this  question  has  been  put  to  me.  Well,  the 
answer  may  be  summed  up  in  three  words — 
home,  independence,  health. 

There  is  much  misplaced  sympathy  for  the 
"poor  isolated  farmer/ '  deprived  from  inter- 
course with  his  fellows,  as  some  well-meaning 
but  mistaken  persons  would  have  us  believe. 
Why,  friends,  a  farm  is  never  lonesome  to  one 
who  loves  the  work.  It  is  teeming  with  life 
and  activity  every  minute  in  the  day,  and 
in  this  period  of  automobiles,  good  roads,  and 
telephones  there  is  not  a  rural  community 

in  the  United  States  that  is  a  hundredth  part 

l 


,.  pfPORTONXTIES  IN  FARMING 

as"' lonely  aS  'the 'biggest  city  on  the  globe, 
where  two  families  may  live  for  years  in 
adjoining  apartments  and  never  become  in- 
timately enough  acquainted  with  each  other 
to  say  "Good  morning"  or  "Good  evening" 
if  any  of  them  should  happen  to  meet  in  the 
hall  or  on  the  stairs  or  in  the  elevator. 

There  is  no  home  like  the  farm  home. 
And  with  the  incomparable  charm  of  rural 
home  life  comes  the  infinite  pleasure  of 
creative  effort  and  the  exhilaration  of  con- 
tending with  nature  and  winning  bread  from 
the  bare  ground.  There  are  a  constancy  and 
a  stability  about  it  all.  There  is  something 
to  build  on,  something  to  look  forward  to  in 
the  years  to  come.  Then,  again,  there  is  a 
feeling  of  independence  that  only  a  chosen 
few  in  the  city  enjoy,  and  a  freedom  from 
those  uncertainties  and  cares  that  are  a  part 
and  parcel  of  the  industrial  wage  -  earner's 
existence. 

Is  not  the  good  health  that  farm  life  as- 
sures worth  something,  too?  Isn't  it  some- 
thing to  realize  not  only  that  you  are  bring- 
ing up  your  children  to  be  vigorous  in  body, 
but  that  their  daily  associations  and  the  disci- 
pline that  grows  out  of  the  work  they  perform 
are  building  character,  self-reliance,  and  the 
will  to  overcome  obstacles?    A  city  boy  is 


WHY  I  AM  A  FARMER 

handicapped  for  the  lack  of  these  early  op- 
portunities. It  is  no  mystery  why  most  of 
the  big  men  in  the  cities  are  country-bred. 

Here  in  the  country  a  man  is  "  somebody  " 
in  the  neighborhood.  You  know  every  one 
and  every  one  knows  you.  When  you  are  in 
distress  the  neighbors  come  from  miles  around 
to  aid  and  comfort  you.  Some  of  the  sweet- 
est memories  of  my  life  are  of  the  time  our 
friends  rallied  to  our  side  when  sorrow  hov- 
ered over  our  household. 

When  the  haying  is  over  and  the  rush  eases 
up  a  bit  we  have  our  picnics  and  farm  in- 
stitutes, and  during  the  off-season  in  the 
winter  months  we  have  many  opportunities 
for  social  and  intellectual  pastimes.  Our 
granges  are  doing  a  wonderful  work  among 
the  rural  population.  Both  men  and  women 
are  admitted  to  membership.  They  are  not 
only  bringing  about  marked  improvements 
in  agriculture  and  promoting  the  material 
interests  of  the  farmers,  but  are  drawing  our 
people  into  closer  personal  relationship.  We 
have  our  arhateur  theatricals,  our  literary 
clubs,  our  barn  dances,  card  parties,  county 
fairs,  meetings  for  the  discussion  of  agri- 
cultural topics — to  enumerate  them  all  would 
fill  pages  of  this  volume. 

Some  people  in  the  cities  have  an  idea  that 

3 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

farm  work  is  not  an  "elevating"  occupation, 
but  I  want  to  say  to  you,  my  friends,  with  all 
the  earnestness  of  which  I  am  capable,  that 
agriculture  is  one  of  the  most  dignified  em- 
ployments in  which  a  man  can  engage. 
Some  of  our  Presidents  and  many  of  our 
Governors  of  states,  on  retiring  from  their 
public  offices,  have  taken  up  farming,  and 
their  laurels  did  not  fade  thereby.  Do  you 
think  it  would  have  been  any  more  com- 
mensurate with  their  dignity  if  they  had 
opened  a  dry-goods  store  or  gone  into  the 
wholesale  butter-and-egg  business?  One  of 
these  men  who  turned  to  farming  when  he 
quit  the  executive  mansion  was  the  late 
ex-Governor  Hoard  of  Wisconsin.  He  did 
more  for  dairying  by  his  progressive  methods 
than  any  other  man  of  this  generation,  and 
every  dairy-farmer  in  the  nation  is,  or  should 
be,  under  lasting  obligations  to  him. 

It  is  true  that  the  farmer's  returns  are 
comparatively  moderate,  but  they  can  be 
counted  upon  with  a  greater  degree  of  cer- 
tainty than  the  average  business.  It  may  be 
true  that  he  has  no  huge  financial  prizes  to 
scramble  for  or  gamble  for.  His  is  a  slow 
and  sure  enterprise,  promising  an  honest 
livelihood  this  year,  competence  by  and  by, 
and   independence   in   the  evening   of   life. 


WHY  I  AM  A  FARMER 

And  all  the  while  he  had  been  free  from  the 
trampling,  crushing,  and  elbowing  that  must 
be  endured  by  millions  cooped  up  in  the 
cities,  "mere  unrecognized  cogs  in  a  huge 
industrial  machine." 

Of  course,  we  have  to  work  for  a  living, 
and  we  have  our  setbacks,  our  discourage- 
ments, and  our  problems,  but  we  are  forging 
ahead  and  there  are  brighter  days  in  store. 
On  every  hand  are  evidences  that  a  new  era 
in  American  agriculture  is  dawning.  And 
as  we  make  progress  in  our  own  well-being 
we  shall  be  doubly  rewarded  by  the  knowl- 
edge that  at  the  same  time  we  are  con- 
tributing to  the  sum  total  of  national  pros- 
perity and  the  advancement  to  higher  and 
nobler  things  on  the  part  of  the  people  as  a 
whole.  For,  be  it  known,  the  farms  are  not 
only  producing  better  crops  and  better  live 
stock,  but  we  are  producing  better  farmers, 
and  better  farmers  mean  a  more  intelligent 
and  useful  class  of  citizens.  As  our  schools 
continue  to  improve  and  as  we  extend  our 
educational  facilities  so  that  our  boys  and 
girls  may  enjoy  all  the  advantages  that 
should  be  rightly  theirs,  the  farming  com- 
munities will  make  a  still  stronger  appeal 
to  the  home-makers  and  more  of  our  farm 
children  will  be  content  to  remain  on  the 

2  5 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

land  when  the  time  comes  for  them  to  choose 
definitely  their  life  vocation. 

I  have  thus  recounted  briefly  why  agri- 
culture has  appealed  to  me.  I  may  add  that 
the  best  and  happiest  years  of  my  life  have 
been  those  spent  on  the  farm.  We  need  more 
men  and  women  out  here  in  the  great  open 
country  who  love  the  farm  for  the  farm's 
sake,  and  to  one  who  has  the  soul  to  respond 
there  is  no  occupation  in  the  wide  world 
that  offers  a  finer  satisfaction  than  that 
which  comes  from  wresting  out  of  the  earth 
the  products  which  underlie  all  civilization 
and  progress.  I  would  deem  it  a  rare  priv- 
ilege if  I  could  be  of  some  small  service  to 
those  thousands  who,  eking  out  an  exist- 
ence in  the  crowded  centers  of  population, 
may  be  planning  new  careers  as  tillers  of  the 
soil.  I  know  there  are  many  potential  farm- 
ers in  the  cities.  The  great  problem  is  how 
to  get  a  proper  start.  In  the  pages  to  follow 
I  shall  try  to  indicate  the  opportunities  that 
agriculture  offers  to  the  city  dwellers  and 
point  out  the  methods  by  which  they  may 
attain  their  worthy  ambition.  I  would  give 
an  understanding  of  the  demands  of  an 
agricultural  life  so  as  to  help  to  a  decision 
whether  to  remain  in  the  city  or  seek  to  es- 
tablish a  home  in  the  country.  After  all,  it 
6 


WHY  I  AM  A  FARMER 

is  a  question  that  can  be  wisely  determined 
only  by  each  person  himself,  but  it  is  pos- 
sible to  formulate  a  broad  outline  that  may 
make  the  path  of  the  beginner  smoother  and 
render  more  probable  the  success  of  his  vent- 
ure, and  this  is  what  I  shall  attempt  to  do. 

As  I  write,  the  rain,  driven  by  a  howling 
nor'easter,  beats  against  our  sitting-room 
windows.  A  genial  warmth  radiates  from 
the  old  box-stove.  I  have  just  come  from 
the  barn  after  the  last  round  of  the  night 
to  see  that  all  is  well  with  the  live  stock. 

Their  quarters  are  snug  and  comfortable. 
I  tossed  each  of  the  animals  a  little  hay  and 
lingered  a  few  minutes  while  they  munched 
placidly.  The  wild  night  lent  an  added 
coziness  within.  On  the  way  back  I  looked 
in  at  the  pigs  and  saw  the  mother  and  her 
latest  family  of  ten  sleeping  peacefully,  half- 
buried  in  the  bedding  of  straw.  Passing 
along,  I  made  sure  that  the  doors  of  the  fowl- 
houses  were  secure.  Now  I  can  revel  in  the 
simple  luxuries  of  my  own  room,  knowing 
that  not  a  living  being  on  the  place  is  suf- 
fering from  cold  or  hunger.  Maybe  our  farm 
isn't  much,  after  the  manner  of  reckoning 
city  fortunes,  but  it  is  our  home  and  we 
love  it. 


II 

FARM  OPPORTUNITIES 

THERE  never  has  been  a  time  in  the  his- 
tory of  this  country  when  there  was  such 
a  demand  as  at  present  for  the  products  of 
the  land.  War  or  no  war,  mankind  must  be 
fed  and  clothed.  With  the  loss  of  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  food-producers  in  the  bellig- 
erent nations,  the  vast  work  of  reconstruction 
abroad  and  our  own  country's  constant  in- 
dustrial growth,  he  is,  indeed,  a  poor  prophet 
who  cannot  foresee  the  tremendous  oppor- 
tunities facing  the  American  farmer. 

This  is  a  condition  to-day  when  countless 
thousands  of  acres  of  good  tillable  land  He 
idle  and  thousands  of  farm  homes,  vacant 
and  abandoned,  are  rotting  away,  their  former 
occupants  long  since  dead  or  moved  to  dis- 
tant cities.  Our  soil  resources,  huge  as  they 
already  are,  in  great  measure  still  are  dor- 
mant, awaiting  the  touch  of  skilled  and  ener- 
8 


FARM  OPPORTUNITIES 

getic  hands.  Never  was  there  such  a  clarion 
call  to  the  congested  population,  never  the 
prospects  better  to  leave  behind  the  bustle 
and  grind  of  the  city  for  the  tranquillity  and 
wholesome  living  in  God's  great  outdoors. 

One  would  be  surprised  to  learn  how  much 
land  there  is  in  the  older  states,  such  as 
Massachusetts  and  New  York,  for  instance, 
that  is  unused,  those  who  once  tilled  it  having 
been  attracted  to  industrial  or  other  occu- 
pations. The  close  proximity  of  these  lands 
to  the  great  markets  makes  them  particularly 
valuable  from  the  farming  point  of  view. 
Surely  it  cannot  be  that  such  opportunities 
will  remain  much  longer  neglected.  The 
Commissioner  of  Agriculture  of  Massachu- 
setts tells  of  land  which,  put  under  inten- 
sive cultivation,  yielded  more  than  one  thou- 
sand dollars  an  acre,  net.  And  there  are 
many  thousands  of  acres  of  such  land  in 
that  state  producing  nothing.  In  New  York, 
land  by  the  tens  of  thousands  of  acres  has 
been  deserted  and  is  advertised  by  the  state 
— lands  upon  which  will  grow  the  finest 
quality  of  fruits,  besides  all  the  staple  cereals 
and  vegetables.  It  has  been  pointed  out 
that  within  fifty  miles  of  the  city  of  Wash- 
ington, in  the  states  of  Maryland  and  Vir- 
ginia, there  are  large  bodies  of  lands  which 

9 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

once  were  parts  of  great  plantations  that  can 
be  had  for  less  than  any  lands  within  equal 
distance  of  most  of  the  larger  cities  of  the 
West.  The  mind  of  the  country  has  been 
turned  toward  the  development  of  raw  lands, 
the  free,  unbroken  lands,  to  the  neglect  of 
opportunities  nearer  the  center  of  the  coun- 
try's markets.  In  almost  every  Southern 
state  instances  can  be  cited  where  white 
men  under  the  wise  direction  of  the  pepart- 
ment  of  Agriculture  support  their  families 
and  make  an  excellent  living  upon  small 
farms  of  from  ten  to  thirty  acres.  Yet  be- 
tween Washington  and  New  Orleans  there 
are  over  forty  million  acres  of  unused  lands. 

Realizing  the  vital  importance  of  agri- 
cultural development  to  the  well-being  of 
the  nation,  the  government  is  rapidly  extend- 
ing educational  and  financial  aid  to  farmers, 
and  the  various  states  are  constantly  striv- 
ing toward  a  betterment  of  marketing  meth- 
ods that  will  inure  to  the  benefit  of  the  pro- 
ducer, at  the  same  time  result  in  a  saving  for 
the  consumer. 

The  Federal  Reserve  Act,  which  has  bene- 
fited every  citizen  through  its  influence  on 
banking  throughout  the  Union,  included  pro- 
visions especially  designed  to  assist  the  farm- 
ing population.  It  authorized  national  banks 
10 


FARM  OPPORTUNITIES 

to  lend  money  On  farm  mortgages  and  recog- 
nized the  peculiar  needs  of  the  farmer  by 
giving  his  paper  a  maturity  period  of  six 
months.  This  was  followed  by  the  Federal 
Farm  Loan  Act,  which  created  a  banking 
system  reaching  intimately  into  the  rural 
districts  and  operating  on  terms  suited  to 
the  farm-owners'  requirements.  In  addition 
to  this,  Secretary  Houston  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  has  a  plan  for  a  system 
of  personal-credit  unions  especially  for  the 
benefit  of  individuals  whose  financial  circum- 
stances and  scale  of  operations  make  it  diffi- 
cult for  them  to  secure  loans  through  ordi- 
nary channels. 

Interest  in  land  for  homes  and  farms  in- 
creases as  the  nation  grows  in  population.  It 
has  become  more  marked  as  the  area  of  public 
land  suitable  and  available  for  agriculture  has 
diminished.  It  is  intensified  at  present  by 
reason  of  the  proposal  of  Secretary  Lane  of 
the  Department  of  the  Interior  that  returned 
soldiers,  and  others  as  well,  who  may  wish 
to  secure  farms,  shall  have  an  opportunity 
to  do  so,  and  by  the  plans  of  various  states 
to  open  up  large  areas  for  farm  settlement. 
Mr.  Lane  has  proposed  three  important  proj- 
ects: first,  an  irrigation  scheme;  second,  a 
drainage  project;  and  third,  the  develop- 
11 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

ment  of  a  body  of  cut-over  lands,  in  all  about 
two  hundred  million  acres.  The  first-men- 
tioned undertaking,  for  instance,  would  need 
to  have  great  dams  constructed  to  impound 
and  divert  waters,  a  hydro-electric  plant, 
miles  of  canal  and  tunnel,  thousands  of  acres 
to  be  cleared  and  leveled,  fenced  and  broken. 
This  would  mean  years  of  work  at  good  wages, 
work  in  the  open  under  housing  conditions 
that  would  seem  palatial  to  the  soldier  of 
the  trench,  and  at  the  end  a  piece  of  land 
on  which  would  be  erected  a  house  and  barn, 
a  farm  home  in  a  group  of  farm-houses. 
For  this  he  must  pay.  But  already  he  has 
received  wages  out  of  which  he  can  have 
saved  the  necessary  first  instalment  of  ten 
or  fifteen  per  cent.  The  balance  with  in- 
terest he  can  pay  in  forty  yearly  instalments, 
or  earlier  if  he  desires.  If  life  in  Arizona,  let 
us  say,  is  not  to  his  liking,  he  can  have  the 
same  opportunity,  after  building  the  Arizona 
project,  to  take  up  a  farm  upon  another 
government  enterprise  in  South  Carolina, 
wh.ere  there  have  been  drained  the  old  rice- 
swamps,  or  in  Wisconsin  on  a  tract  of  what 
was  once  a  swamp  but  has  been  transformed 
into  rolling  prairie  farms. 
Whether  the  government  carries  out  this 

plan  or  puts  some  other  scheme  into  opera- 
12 


FARM  OPPORTUNITIES 

tion,  it  is  certain  that  some  important  under- 
taking along  this  line  is  coming  soon.  It  is 
certain,  too,  that  a  great  many  of  our  re- 
turning soldiers  will  never  be  content  to 
resume  sedentary  occupations.  The  farms 
are  beckoning.  The  opportunities  are  not 
knocking  timidly.  It  is  a  loud  and  insisting 
thumping  at  the  door. 

Now,  as  to  the  chances  a  city  man  has  to 
make  a  living  in  the  country,  I  want  to  be 
perfectly  frank.  The  great  trouble  hereto- 
fore has  been  the  striking  stories  about  won- 
derful farm  crops  that  have  appeared  from 
time  to  time  in  books,  magazines,  Sunday 
papers,  and  real-estate  literature.  Many 
good  city  folk  have  been  led  to  believe  that 
all  they  have  to  do  is  get  a  little  place  in 
the  rural  precincts,  scratch  over  the  top  of 
the  ground,  drop  in  the  seed,  and  sit  back 
in  the  shade  while  things  grow.  "Two 
Acres  and  a  Living,"  "Six  Hundred  Bushels 
of  Potatoes  on  an  Acre  of  Land,"  "Five 
Acres  and  Prosperity."  Fine  reading,  to  be 
sure,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  there  are  very 
few  farmers  in  this  country  who  have  made 
a  living  on  two  acres  of  land;  there  are  very 
few  farms  that  have  produced  six  hundred 
bushels  of  potatoes  to  the  acre,  and  there 
are  very  few  men  who  have  become  prosper- 
13 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

ous  on  five  acres.  These  things  can  be  done 
in  America,  and  are  done,  but  they  are  un- 
usual and  the  result  of  long  experience  and 
study.  Editors  are  in  the  business  for  circula- 
tion. There  is  no  circulation  in  commonplace 
affairs.  That  is  why  so  many  beginners  in 
farming  have  been  led  to  wrong  conclusions 
and  consequent  disappointment  and  loss. 
Statements  that  Farmer  Corntossel  and  his 
son  rose  at  four  o' clock  in  the  morning, 
milked  the  cows,  worked  in  the  field  all  day, 
milked  the  cows  again  at  night,  and  so  made 
two  dollars  apiece,  would  not  aid  circulation 
any  more  than  would  the  statement  that 
Clerk  Straphanger  and  his  son  hurried  down- 
town in  the  morning,  worked  all  day  except 
a  few  minutes  at  the  lunch-counter  at  noon, 
rushed  back  home  at  night  for  supper,  and 
by  so  doing  earned  enough  to  pay  their 
modest  living  expenses. 

Understand,  friends,  that  farming  is  a  con- 
servative business,  and,  like  all  conservative 
enterprises,  it  gives  conservative  returns.  It 
offers  a  good  living  and  a  reasonable  profit 
and,  to  one  who  loves  the  beauties  of  nature 
and  the  fresh  air  and  sunshine,  a  joy  that  is 
boundless.  Compared  with  city  work, ' '  farm- 
ing is  a  better  business  than  some  farmers 
think  it  to  be,  and  poorer  than  some  city 
14 


FARM  OPPORTUNITIES 

persons  think  it  to  be."  A  New  York  State 
official  relates  that  at  a  farm-institute  meet- 
ing the  lecturer  gave  the  profits  of  a  certain 
dairy-farm  for  the  previous  year.  After  the 
meeting  a  prominent  farmer,  taking  the 
lecturer  one  side,  insisted  that  such  a  figure 
was  too  high,  that  it  was  entirely  beyond 
credence.  A  city  business  man  who  also  had 
heard  the  lecture  joined  them  and  declared 
that  a  farm  that  couldn't  show  any  bigger 
earnings  on  investment  than  that  ought  to 
close  up  shop  and  quit.  Of  course  this  man 
could  only  see  the  dollar  in  a  business.  He 
couldn't  understand  the  pleasure  a  real  lover 
of  the  farm  gets  out  of  his  work,  the  feeling 
of  independence,  the  home  comforts  and 
luxuries  that  are  denied  millions  of  city- 
dwellers.  Every  man  wants  to  be  able  to 
give  his  children  a  good  start  in  life,  and  he 
looks  to  a  competence  in  his  old  age,  but  the 
average  farmer  foregoes  the  prospects  of 
great  wealth  in  order  that  he  may  enjoy 
the  things  that  money  could  not  buy  in  a 
city.  "I  will  admit,"  says  " Congressman 
Pilkins,"  "that  it  costs  more  to  live  than  it 
used  to,  but,  fellow-citizens,  it's  worth  it." 


Ill 

WHERE  TO   GO — WHAT  STATE 

THIS  continent  of  ours  is  so  vast,  with 
such  an  infinite  variety  of  agricultural 
conditions,  that  any  suggestion  with  respect 
to  a  particular  section  of  the  country  or 
state,  in  the  matter  of  a  farm  location,  must 
necessarily  be  of  a  very  general  character. 
Let  us  assume  that  you  have  been  thinking 
over  this  question  of  moving  out  to  a  farm. 
If  your  inquiries  have  been'  at  all  extensive 
you  must  have  received  a  great  mass  of  litera- 
ture from  chambers  of  commerce,  railroads, 
real-estate  agents,  etc.,  telling  of  the  advan- 
tages of  this,  that,  and  the  other  place.  If 
you  are  at  a  loss  where  to  go,  it  cannot  have 
been  that  you  have  seen  no  opportunities, 
but  that  your  hesitation  springs  from  the 
abundance  of  them.  For  wherever  you  who 
read  this  may  be,  there  are  openings  all 
around  you,  waiting  to  be  appropriated. 
Unless  there  be  some  special  reason  other- 

16 


WHERE  TO  GO— WHAT  STATE 

wise,  it  is  a  pretty  safe  rule  to  stick  to  your 
own  state.  This  applies  more  directly,  of 
course,  to  a  married  man  with  a  family.  A 
single  man,  with  no  home  ties  and  respon- 
sibilities, naturally  would  feel  freer  to  wan- 
der afar,  should  fancy  so  dictate.  Perhaps 
it  might  be  better  still  to  make  an  investiga- 
tion first  around  in  your  own  county  or 
neighborhood.  If  you  contemplate  buying, 
you  would  perhaps  be  more  familiar  with 
the  value  of  the  land,  could  more  readily 
acquaint  yourself  with  market  possibilities, 
would  know  more  about  the  people  you 
would  five  among,  and  often  it  is  very  essen- 
tial that  the  expense  involved  in  moving 
be  taken  into  consideration.  Then  again, 
what  might  appear  to  you  as  disadvantages 
in  a  section  of  the  country  near  your  home, 
and  so  influence  you  to  seek  elsewhere,  per- 
haps in  a  distant  state,  might  turn  out,  after 
all,  to  be  not  so  serious  as  other  drawbacks 
you  would  encounter  after  having  traveled 
a  long  distance  in  the  hoping  of  finding  a 
locality  measuring  up  more  nearly  to  the 
plans  you  have  in  view. 

Now  let  us  be  a  little  more  specific.  You 
are  a  shipping-clerk  in  Boston,  a  store  sales- 
man in  Philadelphia,  or  a  street-car  con- 
ductor or  a  teamster  in  New  York.    You  are 

17 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

not  making  much  headway  in  town.  Ex- 
penses are  advancing  far  more  rapidly  than 
your  wages  are  increasing,  and  the  purchas- 
ing power  of  your  weekly  " envelope"  that 
you  take  home  Saturday  night  has  shriveled 
until  it  buys  just  about  half  as  much  as  it 
used  to.  You  are  living  in  a  "two-by-four" 
flat,  "so  small,"  as  Frank  Wing,  the  Vir- 
ginia humorist,  describes  it,  "that  every 
time  you  lean  out  the  front  window  your 
back  suspender-button  scratches  the  paint 
off  the  kitchen  wall."  You  see  your  children 
growing  up  in  the  streets  and  you  and  your 
good  wife  are  in  constant  dread  of  their  being 
crushed  and  mangled  by  some  automobile 
or  trolley-car.  You  and  the  wife  have  been 
thinking  a  good  deal  about  this  farming 
scheme,  and  at  last  have  definitely  resolved 
to  break  away  from  the  city.  Now,  instead 
of  striking  off  'way  out  to  Missouri  or  down 
to  Louisiana  because  you  have  been  reading 
about  the  attractive  farm  homes  offered 
there,  why  not  look  up  something  nearer  at 
hand? 

No  matter  how  many  farm  catalogues  you 
have  pored  over,  no  matter  how  many  pretty 
pictures  you  have  gazed  upon,  you  can  never 
get  any  sort  of  an  adequate  idea  of  a  place 
until  you  go  and  see  it  with  your  own  eyes. 

18 


WHERE  TO  GO— WHAT  STATE 

Traveling  comes  high  these  days,  and  the 
money  spent  on  a  long  trip  will  come  in 
mighty  handy  when  once  you  get  settled  in 
your  new  home.  For  returns  are  terribly 
slow  the  first  year,  and  there  are  so  many 
absolutely  necessary  outlays  in  getting  things 
going.  A  train  ride  of  from  one  to  three 
hours  from  any  one  of  the  above-men- 
tioned cities  will  take  one  to  any  number  of 
desirable  farms  for  sale  or  rent,  or  to  any 
number  of  big  farms  where  the  owners  are 
in  need  of  help.  They  prefer  the  family 
man,  by  the  way,  and  offer  comfortable 
houses  with  free  fuel,  milk,  and  vegetables. 
The  pay  ranges  from  fifty  dollars  to  seventy- 
five  dollars  a  month,  and  even  more.  I  men- 
tion New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Boston 
merely  by  way  of  example.  The  same  situa- 
tion could  be  cited  with  regard  to  Chicago 
or  San  Francisco,  Atlanta  or  St.  Paul,  or 
any  other  large  center. 

Distance  lends  enchantment  and  many 
have  journeyed  hundreds,  even  thousands, 
of  miles  in  quest  of  things  that  lay  all  the 
while  at  their  own  doors.  The  writer  is  ac- 
quainted with  two  Long  Island,  New  York, 
farmers.  They  had  been  fanning  for  years 
on  Long  Island  and  were  doing  well,  growing 
truck  and  selling  it  at  the  Wallabout  Market 
19 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

in  Brooklyn.  One  of  them  got  it  into  his 
head  that  there  were  big  chances  for  him  in 
Oklahoma,  and  the  other  harbored  a  notion 
that  he  could  do  better  up  in  Connecticut. 
So  they  sold  out  and  hied  themselves  to 
pastures  new.  In  two  years  the  Oklahoma 
enthusiast  was  back  on  Long  Island  after 
having  sunk  three  thousand  dollars,  and  the 
Connecticut  victim  returned  in  seven  years, 
mortgaged  to  the  limit.  Of  course,  this  is 
not  intended  as  any  reflection  whatever 
upon  either  Oklahoma  or  Connecticut.  There 
is  no  end  to  the  successful  farmers  in  both  of 
those  great  states  and  both  are  rich  in  agri- 
cultural possibilities.  It  simply  means  that 
these  two  Long  Island  men  went  up  against 
farming  conditions  that  were  new  and  strange 
to  them.  Their  New  York  State  methods 
and  their  New  York  State  experiences  were 
not  adaptable  to  Connecticut  and  Oklahoma. 
An  Oklahoma  man,  versed  in  Western  ways, 
or  a  Connecticut  man  who  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  farming  as  it  is  done  in  New  Eng- 
land, might  very  well  have  been  similarly 
disillusioned  by  pulling  up  stakes  and  settling 
on  Long  Island,  there  tackling  problems  dif- 
ferent from  anything  they  had  hitherto  been 
called  on  to  face. 

So,   as  a  broad  proposition,   the  writer 
20 


WHERE  TO  GO—WHAT  STATE 

would  suggest  that  if  you  are  living  in  the 
West,  look  up  a  Western  farm;  if  you  are  in 
the  South,  proceed  with  caution  in  getting 
away  from  a  territory  so  attractive;  and  if 
in  New  England,  bear  in  mind  the  great 
industrial  population,  the  unrivaled  trans- 
portation facilities,  and  the  proximity  to 
markets  of  those  thriving  states.  Anything 
approaching  an  analysis  of  the  farming  sit- 
uation in  any  given  state  would  be  entirely 
out  of  place  in  these  pages.  Volumes  by  the 
hundreds  and  literature  by  the  ton  are  within 
easy  reach,  setting  forth  in  minute  detail  all 
the  information  that  any  one  could  possibly 
desire.  The  government  reclamation  and 
land-settlement  projects  of  the  West  and 
South;  the  cotton  and  rice  and  sugar-cane 
fields  of  Dixie;  the  corn,  hog,  and  dairy 
farms  of  the  Middle  West;  the  stock-farms 
and  the  tobacco-farms  of  Kentucky;  the 
cattle-ranches  of  the  Texas  plains;  the  sheep- 
herding  of  Wyoming  and  adjoining  states; 
the  all-the-year-around  planting  in  Florida, 
"the  nation's  garden";  the  orchards  and 
dairies  of  New  York  and  New  England;  the 
trucking  of  New  Jersey,  Delaware,  and  on 
down  the  coasts  of  Maryland,  Virginia,  the 
Carolinas,  and  Georgia;   the  grain  states  of 

the  Northwest;    the  broad  prairies  of  Kan- 
3  21 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

sas,  "that  feed  the  world";  the  fruit  and 
grain  lands  of  California;  the  apple-growing 
of  Oregon  and  Washington — all  have  their 
champions.  Study  well  the  opportunities 
that  each  section  offers,  weigh  its  good  points 
and  its  bad  points  and  compare  them  with 
the  advantages  and  shortcomings  of  some 
other  section.  Determine  at  least  in  a  gen- 
eral way  what^line  of  farming  you  intend 
to  undertake,  figure  up  your  available  capi- 
tal, and  finally  choose  your  state. 

Next  begin  a  thorough  and  systematic  in- 
vestigation with  a  view  to  selecting  a  partic- 
ular locality.  Let  us  assume  that  you  have 
acquired  numerous  descriptive  fists  of  avail- 
able farms.  Some  of  these  may  have  been 
furnished  by  the  real-estate  agents,  some  may 
have  been  kindly  sent  to  you  by  the  various 
state  experiment  stations,  others  you  may 
have  obtained  by  answering  newspaper  ad- 
vertisements or  yourself  inserting  adver- 
tisements and  receiving  a  flood  of  replies. 
Go  over  these  lists  carefully,  and  when  you 
have  hit  upon  one  that  appears  as  though  it 
might  be  about  what  you  are  seeking,  and 
its  price  and  terms  suit  your  pocketbook,  get 
out  your  map  and  see  how  far  it  is  from  the 
nearest  city  or  town.  You  must  not  for- 
get that  the  success  or  failure  of  your  enter- 
22 


WHERE  TO  GO— WHAT  STATE 

prise  is  going  to  hinge  very  largely  on  the 
question  of  markets.  No  matter  how  dili- 
gently you  labor  and  no  matter  how  abun- 
dant your  crops  are,  you  will  fail  unless  you 
find  a  good  market  for  your  wares.  Study 
the  methods  of  transportation — by  boat  or 
train  or  trolley — and  whether  you  will  have 
to  depend  upon  your  own  farm  team  or 
automobile.  If  the  place  in  which  you  have 
become  interested  is  some  distance  away 
from  your  present  home,  examine  into  the 
climate  and  the  seasons,  the  period  between 
frosts.  Find  out  about  the  schools.  Some 
rural  districts  are  more  advanced  than  others 
in  this  regard.  In  short,  gather  all  the  pre- 
liminary data  possible  and  then  go  look 
things  over  for  yourself.  By  such  a  "process 
of  elimination  you  will  save  a  great  deal  of 
fruitless  traveling  and  considerable  money, 
and  render  it  far  easier  and  quicker  to  make 
your  final  selection. 

All  these  considerations  may  play  a  very 
important  part  later  on  in  your  endeavors 
to  make  a  wise  decision,  so  it  were  best  that 
you  proceed  with  the  utmost  deliberation 
and  care.  You  are  about  to  take  a  step  that 
means  a  great  change  in  the  course  of  your 
career.     "I  am  in  an  awful  hurry,  coachman; 

drive  slowly,"  says  an  Italian  proverb. 
23 


IV 

SELECTING  A  FARM 

IN  choosing  a  farm  there  are  five  prime 
values  that  should  be  kept  uppermost  in 
mind — home  value,  agricultural  and  econom- 
ic value,  healthfulness  value,  community 
or  neighborhood  value,  and  markets  value. 
In  the  first  place,  you  are  going  to  make  the 
farm  your  home.  You  will  have  to  live 
there  as  well  as  work  there,  and  a  man  wants 
to  live  as  well  as  he  can  afford.  But  how- 
ever attractive  the  home  itself  may  be,  do 
not  forget  that  a  fine  house  will  never  pro- 
duce good  crops,  that  a  charming  panorama 
will  not  pasture  your  animals  in  summer  or 
shelter  them  in  winter.  On  the  other  hand, 
let  not  too  much  stress  be  put  upon  the 
economic  and  market  features  lest  there  be 
too  great  sacrifice  exacted  from  the  personal 
comforts  the  farm  should  afford.  Again, 
there  should  be  that  careful  balancing  of  the 

24 


SELECTING  A  FARM 

pros  and  cons,  as  it  were,  to  arrive  at  a 
happy  medium.  The  same  may  be  said  as 
to  the  desirability  of  the  neighborhood  with 
respect  to  the  educational  facilities  and  so- 
cial surroundings,  as  weighed  against  health- 
fulness  of  climate.  Certainly  near-by  schools 
and  accessibility  to  markets  are  highly  im- 
portant, but  it  would  be  a  grievous  mistake 
to  settle  down  at  any  place  where  the  physi- 
cal well-being  of  every  member  of  the  family 
could  not  be  absolutely  assured. 

Before  making  your  inspection  of  a  farm 
prepare  a  list  of  the  points  that  demand 
special  attention.  Let  us  call  it  a  score-card. 
It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  you  are  going 
to  accept  the  first  place  visited.  If  it  should 
apparently  fill  the  bill,  pass  on  after  looking 
it  over  thoroughly  and  continue  the  search. 
You  may  find  something  still  more  to  your 
liking  or  you  may  not.  In  any  event  it  will 
be  easy  to  return  to  the  first  choice.  Jot 
down  in  your  note-book  the  data  obtained  at 
each  place,  so  that  in  rendering  final  judg- 
ment you  will  not  have  overlooked  something 
that  may  lead  to  regrets  long  afterward 
when  it  is  too  late. 

There  are  just  about  one  hundred  chances 
to  one  against  a  haphazard  selection  of  a 
farm  turning  out  satisfactorily.     Do  not  let 

25 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

your  eagerness  and  enthusiasm  blind  you  to 
details.  At  the  same  time,  there  is  danger 
of  becoming  so  deeply  engrossed  in  minor 
details  that  some  wholly  vital  consideration 
may  escape  notice.  There  is  a  story  of  a 
commuter  who  labored  in  his  cellar  during 
his  spare  hours  in  the  evening  for  an  entire 
winter,  building  a  chicken-coop.  He  was  a 
very  painstaking  worker.  Every  board  had 
to  fit  just  so,  and  every  corner  squared  with 
perfect  nicety.  Even  in  the  painting  of  it 
the  color  scheme  of  the  trimmings  blended 
harmoniously  and  artistically  with  the  body 
of  the  structure.  It  was  a  little  gem,  a  hen- 
house that  would  be  an  ornament  and  not  a 
back-yard  eyesore  such  as  the  ramshackle 
affair  that  graced  his  neighbor's  rear  premises. 
But,  lo  and  behold!  when  the  man  started 
to  take  his  architectural  masterpiece  out  of 
the  cellar  the  pesky  thing  was  too  big  to 
pass  through  the  doorway. 

We  read  a  good  deal  nowadays  about 
abandoned  farms,  how  some  quaint  old- 
fashioned  building  has  been  restored  to  its 
original  beauty  and  its  weed-covered  acres 
brought  up  to  a  high  state  of  cultivation. 
There  is  no  denying  that  there  is  a  certain 
charm  about  these  picturesque  old  home- 
steads, hallowed  by  time  and  rich  in  mem- 

26 


SELECTING  A  FARM 

ories  of  bygone  years,  and  many  of  them 
have  been  transformed  into  delightful  re- 
treats, but  a  poor  man  starting  out  to  dig 
his  livelihood  out  of  the  ground  would  do 
well  to  give  most  of  such  places  a  wide 
berth.  It  is  all  very  well  if  you  have  the 
money  to  indulge  such  a  hobby,  but  if 
your  funds  are  low  leave  the  run-down  places 
to  people  with  fat  pocketbooks  or  to  those 
skilled  in  the  science  of  soil  rejuvenation. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  the 
farm  dwelling  should  be  subjected  to  close 
scrutiny.  Speaking  broadly,  immediate  or 
urgent  repairs  should  not  be  necessary. 
There  might  be  a  case  where  the  closing  of 
the  transaction  revolved  around  some  com- 
paratively inexpensive  alterations  or  im- 
provements, the  farm  being  desirable  in  all 
other  essentials.  Then  a  house  needing  re- 
pairs might  be  acceptable.  As  it  is  the  pur- 
pose of  the  writer  to  give  a  broad  outline, 
allowance  must  always  be  made  for  excep- 
tions in  the  suggestions  advanced.  A  gen- 
eral guide  of  this  nature  and  scope  cannot  be 
given  with  mathematical  precision.  So  we 
repeat,  steer  clear  of  dilapidated  buildings. 
This  is  addressed  especially  to  the  man  of 
limited  means.  There  is  little  time  the  first 
year  to  be  spent  overhauling  and  remodeling. 
27 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

Look  well  to  the  interior  arrangements,  too. 
Of  course,  a  city  couple  cannot  expect  to 
find  in  the  average  farm-house  -all  the  labor- 
saving  devices  and  comforts  of  a  modern 
apartment,  but  even  in  the  country  there 
are  certain  conveniences  that  should  be  con- 
sidered indispensable.  Decision  upon  this 
point  may  safely  be  left  to  the  wife.  After 
her  survey  she  should  try  to  picture  herself 
performing  her  routine  duties  in  her  new 
kitchen.  By  exercising  a  little  foresight  one 
cannot  go  very  far  wrong. 

In  looking  over  things  outside  keep  in 
mind  what  line  of  agriculture  you  intend  to 
pursue.  If  you  plan  to  go  in  for  dairying, 
for  instance,  note  well  the  barn — whether  it 
will  be  large  enough  for  your  needs,  whether 
there  is  a  silo,  and,  above  all,  the  barn's 
state  of  repair.  If  it  is  going  to  require  re- 
shingling  and  painting  shortly,  just  look 
ahead  for  a  moment  at  that  two  hundred 
dollars  that  must  come  out  of  the  returns 
at  that  time.  There  will  be  plenty  of  places 
to  put  that  two  hundred  dollars  when  the 
taxes  and  the  mortgage  fall  due.  If  you 
expect  to  raise  hogs,  how  about  the  neces- 
sary buildings?  The  same  pertains  to  sheep, 
horses,  poultry,  cattle,  or  other  live  stock. 
A  suggestion  along  this  line  would  be  to 
28 


SELECTING  A  FARM 

confine  your  quest  at  first  to  farms  that 
have  produced  the  crops  you  have  in  view. 
A  wheat-ranch  could  not  be  expected  to  have 
the  equipment  for  a  dairy-farm.  Is  there 
adequate  pasturage,  has  it  a  running  brook, 
is  a  portion  of  it  shaded,  and  last,  but  not 
least,  is  it  properly  fenced?  A  farmer  with 
a  herd  of  cows  and  broken-down  fences  would 
be  a  logical  candidate  for  the  sympathy  of 
his  bitterest  enemy. 

You  will  want  to  learn  as  much  as  possible 
about  the  character  of  the  soil,  its  adaptabil- 
ity to  the  crops  you  aim  to  grow,  how  the 
land  lies,  and  how  stony  it  is.  Some  stony 
soils  have  been  known  to  yield  bumper  har- 
vests, but  the  writer  would  not  recommend 
such  land  to  a  beginner.  It  requires  a  pa- 
tience founded  on  the  Rock  of  Ages  to  plow, 
cultivate,  and  mow  over  a  sea  of  assorted 
stones.  Some  small  part  of  the  farm  may 
contain  such  fields  without  it  being  set  down 
as  a  fatal  disqualification,  but  if  all  the  till- 
able soil  is  similarly  infested,  the  prospective 
purchaser  would  show  wisdom  in  moving 
along. 

Shall  it  be  a  large  or  small  farm?    This 

has  been  a  mooted  question  among  farmers 

for  a  great  many  years,  and  it  is  just  as  far 

from  being  settled  now  as  ever.    For  the 

29 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

beginner  this  vague  suggestion  may  be 
vouchsafed:  Don't  undertake  too  large  a 
place.  "A  little  farm  well  tilled,  a  little 
barn  well  filled,  and  a  little  wife  well  willed" 
is  not  only  a  pretty  sentiment,  but  is  sound 
philosophy.  Many  farms  are  unprofitable 
because  too  much  is  planted.  One  hundred 
bushels  of  corn  can  be  raised  much  more 
easily  on  one  acre  well  tilled  and  nourished 
than  on  two  indifferently  cultivated  and 
insufficently  fertilized.  Economy  of  labor 
goes  to  the  very  root  of  the  whole  business. 
I  don't  care  how  profound  your  knowledge 
of  the  chemistry  of  agriculture,  how  deeply 
you  may  be  versed  in  the  science  of  crop 
rotation,  how  skilled  you  are  in  feeding  ani- 
mals for  profits,  if  you  waste  your  labor  you 
have  set  the  brakes  for  the  up-hill  pull. 

How  about  capital?  This  is  a  problem 
which  doubtless  you  have  pondered  long  and 
earnestly.  If  you  have  a  thousand  dollars 
or  so  cash  in  hand  it  is  going  to  simplify 
matters  for  you,  but  do  not  be  discouraged 
even  should  one  or  two  hundred  be  the 
extent  of  your  resources.  The  man  in  the 
latter  class  should  hold  tightly  to  his  one  or 
two  hundred  and  go  to  work  on  some  up- 
to-date  farm  for  wages.  There  never  was  a 
time  in  the  history  of  this  country  when  the 


SELECTING  A  FARM 

farm-hand  was  so  well  paid  as  he  is  to-day. 
In  many  respects,  even  with  enough  capital 
to  buy  for  yourself,  this  might  be  a  wiser 
plan  than  launching  out  on  one's  own  ac- 
count. In  all  cases  there  is  the  ever-present 
possibility  that  farm  work  may  not  suit  you. 
A  year  or  two  of  practical  experience  with 
modern  methods  will  be  of  incalculable  value 
when  you  are  finally  in  a  position  to  go  it 
alone.  And  so  with  regard  to  renting  a 
place.  Unless  you  are  reasonably  sure  that 
you  will  like  the  work,  it  might  not  be  a  bad 
idea  to  become  a  tenant.  There  are  many 
thousands  of  prosperous  tenant  farmers, 
mostly  in  the  South  and  West.  As  a  per- 
manent institution,  however,  tenancy  is  not 
desirable,  but  as  a  stepping-stone  to  owner- 
ship and  a  practical  schooling  for  the  begin- 
ner it  offers  excellent  opportunities. 

In  either  buying  or  renting  there  is  a 
big  advantage  in  obtaining  farms  already 
equipped  with  stock  and  tools.  Many  of  this 
kind  are  available.  In  this  way  needed  capi- 
tal may  be  retained  for  operations.  As  to  the 
proportion  of  capital  to  be  paid  in  cash,  it  is 
wise  to  have  a  comfortable  margin  to  tide 
over  the  first  two  years,  for  that  is  the  test 
period  for  the  novice.  If  he  can  weather 
the  first  two  years  without  getting  any  deeper 

31 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

into  debt  than  when  he  started  he  is  "out 
of  the  woods."  Where  land  is  cheap  and 
the  rise  in  value  is  certain,  one  may,  of  course, 
put  more  money  in  land  than  when  it  is 
high  and  in  a  settled  community  near  local 
markets.  But  whatever  you  do,  bear  in 
mind  the  importance  of  a  life-boat  in  the 
form  of  a  reserve  fund. 


WHAT  LINE   OF  FARMING 

TAKE  any  department  of  farming  you 
please  and  there  will  be  found  many 
failures  and  many  successes,  as  in  every 
other  pursuit  of  life.  Just  as  agriculture  as 
a  whole  offers  limitless  opportunities,  so  each 
particular  line  is  fraught  with  rich  possibili- 
ties, provided  the  right  man  gets  in  the  right 
place. 

There  are  some  iconoclasts  who  make  a 
practice  of  deriding  every  attempt  to  en- 
courage the  city  man  in  his  farming  aspira- 
tions, and  they  jeer  at  so-called  "back  to 
the  land  movements "  as  dreamy  senti- 
mentalism.  They  admit  that  "the  passion 
for  the  city"  has  assumed  alarming  propor- 
tions, threatening  the  foundation  of  national 
progress  and  prosperity,  but  that  the  only 
way  to  correct  this  danger  is  to  make  agri- 
culture more  attractive  as  a  business  proposi- 
33 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

tion  and  bring  about  betterments  in  the  social 

condition  of  the  rural  population.    That  is 

well,  but  it  isn't  all  of  the  story.     There  is 

a  vast  number  of  fanning  "misfits."     True, 

they  were  brought  up  on  the  farm,  many  of 

them,  but  they  will  never  succeed.     They 

may  jog  along  and  contrive  to  keep  the  wolf 

from  the  door,  but  they  will  not  accomplish 

anything   worth   while.    These    same   men 

might  achieve  fame  and  fortune  in  some  line 

of  endeavor  where  their  natural  inclinations 

fitted  them  for  the  work.     I  used  to  know  a 

barber  who  had  graduated  with  high  honors 

from  Yale  University.    He  was  justly  proud 

of  his  Alma  Mater,  and  his  class  photograph 

hung  on  the  wall  of  his  little  shop.    He  wasn't 

even  a  successful  barber  and  was  glad  enough 

to  sell  out  for  two  hundred  dollars. 

After  that  I  lost  sight  of  him,  so  do  not 

know  what  occupation  he  next  took  up.    He 

was  a  failure  as  a  barber,  but  in  some  other 

vocation  he  might  have  climbed  to  the  top. 

The  man  had  not  "struck  his  stride."    And 

all  over  this  broad  land  of  ours  are  farms 

occupied   by   men   similarly   out   of   place. 

They  will  continue  to  drift  into  industrial 

and  commercial  activities,  and  their  places 

and  the  places  of  others  who  are  quitting  the 

farms  for  one  reason  or  another  must  be 
34 


WHAT  LINE  OF  FARMING 

filled  from  the  overcrowded  city  population. 
Every  year  men  are  leaving  the  cities  and 
going  to  the  farms,  and  the  movement  will 
grow.  Up  to  this  time  it  has  not  kept  pace 
with  the  trend  from  the  farms  to  the  cities. 

A  city  man  who  has  reached  the  con- 
clusion that  the  farm  holds  out  a  better 
chance  of  his  getting  on  in  the  world  than 
his  present  occupation  in  town  promises, 
and  who  has  sufficient  confidence  in  his  de- 
termination to  win,  need  have  no  hesitancy 
in  embarking  upon  a  farm  enterprise.  One 
of  the  most  prominent  dairymen  in  Con- 
necticut told  me  not  long  ago  that  he  was 
a  school-teacher  thirty-five  years  old  when  he 
left  the  city.  For  many  years  after  he  gave 
up  teaching  school  this  farmer  peddled  milk 
in  the  city  of  Hartford.  He  was  one  of  the 
men  who  "  couldn't  plow  a  straight  furrow/' 
as  some  of  the  iconoclasts  tell  us,  but  he  soon 
learned,  and  now,  after  fifteen  years  or  more, 
he  is  able  to  hire  somebody  else  to  do  his 
plowing. 

Any  suggestion  concerning  a  particular 
branch  of  agriculture  would  depend  in  large 
measure  upon  one's  personal  tastes  and 
physical  strength.  If  you  are  of  a  robust 
constitution  there  is  only  one  possible  sug- 
gestion, and  that  is,  undertake  the  work  that 

35 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

interests  you  most.  There  is  a  variety  of 
choices,  each  one  requiring  its  own  peculiar 
fitness  and  training  if  a  marked  degree  of 
success  is  to  be  attained.  This  is  an  era  of 
farm  specialization  and  no  one  person  can 
be  expected  to  master  the  subject  of  agri- 
culture in  all  its  ramifications.  There  are 
also  certain  temperamental  distinctions.  For 
example,  some  men  are  better  adapted  for 
the  broad  expanses  of  the  grain-ranches  than 
for  the  circumscribed  market-garden.  Some 
persons  would  fail  dismally  at  track-fanning 
simply  because  they  haven't  the  patience 
to  buckle  down  to  the  exacting  details.  This 
is  where  the  intensive  methods  are  put  to 
the  most  profitable  use.  These  intensive 
methods,  however,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind, 
require  a  great  deal  of  labor  and  manage- 
ment of  a  high  order.  The  beginner  on  a 
truck-farm  should  take  care  not  to  map  out 
more  the  first  year  than  he  can  carry  through. 
Try  to  arrange  your  plantings  so  that  there 
will  be  a  succession  of  harvests,  and  in  this 
way  prevent  the  spoiling  of  some  important 
crop  before  it  can  be  gathered.  As  an  illus- 
tration, take  an  acre  of  peas.  With  a  ma- 
chine one  man  can  quickly  do  the  planting, 
and  the  use  of  a  one-horse  cultivator  makes 

the  tilling  an  easy  matter,  but  one  man  is 
36 


WHAT  LINE  OF  FARMING 

lost  in  that  acre  of  peas  when  the  time  for 
picking  rolls  around.  The  seeding  of  the 
crops  is  a  comparatively  light  task.  The 
harvesting  and  marketing  will  put  you  to 
one  of  your  first  severe  tests. 

To  undertake  to  cover  the  various  kinds 
of  farm  operations  would  drag  this  chapter 
out  to  tedious  and  unnecessary  length,  but 
it  might  not  be  amiss  to  mention  the  im- 
portance of  quick-cash  crops,  especially  from 
a  beginner's  point  of  view.  The  cereal  crops 
of  the  North  and  the  tobacco  and  cotton 
products  of  the  South  bring  in  early  returns; 
so  do  hogs,  truck,  and  poultry,  whereas  beef, 
mutton,  and  wool  require  a  longer  period 
for  the  realization  of  profits.  In  dairying 
there  is  a  constant  income  and,  much  too 
often,  a  continual  expenditure  for  concen- 
trated feeds.  But  progressive  dairymen  per- 
ceive the  folly  of  buying  so  much  grain  for 
their  cows,  and  those  who  enjoy  the  biggest 
net  earnings  are  the  men  who  produce  all  or 
nearly  all  of  the  heavy  feed  on  their  own 
farms.  There  may  be  exceptions  to  this  in 
the  grain-producing  Western  states,  but  some 
of  the  Eastern  milk-producers,  owing  to  their 
staggering  grain  bills,  have  simply  been  ex- 
changing an  old  dollar  for  a  new  one.    There 

used  to  be  an  old  joke  up  in  Connecticut 
4  37 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

that  dairy-farming  was  the  only  business  on 
earth  which  could  go  on  year  after  year 
losing  money  and  still  make  a  living  for  the 
owner.  If  this  be  true  a  beginner  should 
feel  encouraged.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  dairy- 
ing is  one  of  the  most  attractive  branches  of 
agriculture,  and  within  the  next  few  years  it 
will  unquestionably  experience  a  rapid  de- 
velopment, especially  in  the  Southern  states. 
One  of  the  requisites  to  the  success  of  any 
business  enterprise  is  the  certainty  of  mar- 
kets for  its  products.  There  is  an  assured 
market  for  all  the  dairy  products  that  can 
be  produced  in  the  Southeastern  states.  For 
it  is  shown  that  every  year  that  section  of  the 
country  sends  out  millions  of  dollars  to  the 
North  and  West  for  butter,  condensed  milk, 
and  cheese.  Southern  farmers  can,  there- 
fore, rely  upon  their  home  markets  to  take 
all  their  dairy  products  for  many  years  to 
come,  and  when  their  home  markets  have 
been  fully  supplied  the  constantly  growing 
demand  of  the  densely  populated  Northeast 
will  enable  them  still  further  to  expand  their 
production.  An  inexperienced  man  with 
small  capital  would  have  to  start  in  on  a 
modest  scale,  which  would  be  wiser,  any- 
way. His  early  mistakes  would  not  be  of 
such  vital  consequence,  and  with  some  crop 

38 


WHAT  LINE  OF  FARMING 

diversification  to  help  meet  expenses  he 
would  run  less  chance  of  failure  than  per- 
haps in  any  other  line  of  farming. 

Nut  culture  is  popular,  especially  as  a  side- 
line. Of  course,  it  need  not  necessarily  be  a 
side-line.  A  great  many  farmers  are  devot- 
ing their  entire  time  to  it.  A  grove  of 
mature  nut-bearing  trees,  however,  is  ex- 
pensive and  may  be  beyond  your  means. 
Its  attractiveness,  from  a  beginner's  point  of 
view,  lies  in  the  comparative  small  expendi- 
ture of  time  and  money  involved  in  getting 
a  young  grove  started.  While  you  are  earn- 
ing your  living  on  the  rest  of  the  farm  your 
nut-trees  are  gradually  nearing  the  time 
when  the  cash  returns  from  them  will  begin 
to  come  in.  A  fairly  large  pecan,  almond, 
hazlenut,  or  English-walnut  grove  means  in- 
dependence. As  yet  most  of  the  English 
walnuts,  almonds,  and  hazlenuts  are  pro- 
duced, as  commercial  crops,  on  the  Pacific 
coast;  but  the  pecan,  the  most  important 
native  nut  of  America,  will  grow  in  almost 
every  state  in  the  union.  Chestnuts  also  are 
grown  all  the  way  from  Maine  south  as  far 
as  Georgia,  and  west  to  Michigan.  The 
scientists  have  found  a  way  to  control  the 
blight  that  killed  off  so  many  of  the  old 
trees.     Large  quantities  of  other  nuts,  such 

39 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

as  hickory-nuts  and  black  walnuts,  are  gath- 
ered from  wild  trees. 

It  is  the  looking  forward  that  will  count 
in  the  end  on  your  farm.  It  will  require 
about  fifteen  years  for  a  pecan-grove  to  reach 
the  height  of  its  productivity,  though  it  will 
yield  fairly  well  in  ten.  That  may  seem  a 
long  time,  but  if  it  will  add  from  five  to 
fifteen  thousand  dollars  to  the  value  of  the 
farm,  you  must  admit  that  it  is  worth  waiting 
for  and  working  for.  It  will  be  equivalent 
to  putting  several  hundred  dollars  a  year  in 
the  bank. 

Bees,  if  given  proper  care,  yield  very  satis- 
factory profits.  The  work  is  interesting  and 
is  not  laborious.  A  woman  can  easily  attend 
to  a  large  apiary. 

Poultry-raising  is  a  good  business.  Its 
rudiments  can  be  mastered  in  a  suburban 
back  yard.  Many  successful  men  and  women 
have  begun  just  that  way.  The  work  is  not 
so  laborious  as  in  some  other  farm  activities, 
and  would  appeal  strongly  to  one  unequal 
to  the  strain  of  heavy  manual  toil.  Orchard- 
ing is  another  branch  that  gives  good  returns 
with  less  actual  labor  involved  than  even 
poultry  demands.  Peaches,  plums,  and  cher- 
ries must  be  picked  and  marketed  quickly, 

being  highly  perishable,  hence  are  less  de- 
40 


WHAT  LINE  OF  FARMING 

sirable  for  a  beginner,  who  may  be  handi- 
capped by  a  lack  of  knowledge  of  the  labor 
and  selling  situations,  than  apples,  which, 
if  of  good  quality  and  accessible  to  good 
local  markets,  can  be  sold  without  difficulty 
on  the  trees,  the  owner  being  relieved  of  all 
handling.  To  be  sure,  fruit  trees  require 
close  attention,  but  all  the  novice  need  worry 
about  the  first  year  is  the  spraying  and 
pruning.  This  is  not  so  formidable  an  under- 
taking as  might  be  supposed.  Expert  advice 
is  always  readily  available  as  to  any  other 
information  desired,  so  that  the  trees  are  not 
likely  to  suffer  any  great  damage  while  the 
beginner  is  getting  his  bearings.  Reading 
the  hundreds  of  government  pamphlets  and 
the  scores  of  experiment-station  bulletins, 
detailing  the  various  diseases  that  beset  fruit 
trees  and  the  hordes  of  destructive  insects 
that  prey  upon  them,  is  a  good  deal  like  a 
perusal  of  the  family  almanac.  A  man  who 
studies  the  almanac  too  assiduously  will  soon 
find  in  himself  the  symptoms  of  every  malady 
known  to  medical  science,  though,  in  reality, 
he  may  be  as  sound  as  a  dollar.  Spray  your 
trees  three  or  four  times  in  the  spring  as 
required,  and  your  neighbor  who  has  been 
producing  fruit  for  years  and  knows  all  the 

ins  and  outs  will  furnish  you  with  any  ad- 
41 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

ditional  advice.  You  are  going  to  find  those 
neighbors  invaluable.  Watch  their  methods 
and  don't  be  afraid  to  ask  questions.  Don't 
essay  novelties  at  the  start  in  the  way  of 
fanning.  The  types  of  farming  that  have 
survived  in  a  particular  locality  are  the  ones 
that  have  stood  the  test.  And,  finally,  take 
heed  to  the  warning  of  Willis  P.  Rogers: 
"  Don't  be  bull-headed  with  the  land.  Don't 
persist  in  trying  to  grow  merely  what  you 
want  to  grow,  without  ever  giving  a  thought 
to  what  the  land  wants  to  grow." 


VI 

CHOP  DIVERSIFICATION  AND   SIDE-LINES 

EVERY  farm  should  be  self-supporting  so 
far  as  such  a  plan  is  consistent  with 
profits.  Nine  out  of  ten  farmers  buy  too 
many  products  that  could  very  well  be 
grown  at  home.  This  would  not  apply  to 
market -gardeners  who  till  the  soil  on  an 
intensified  scale.  Such  men  would  not  be 
justified,  for  instance,  in  planting  oats  for 
their  horses  on  land  that  was  yielding  them 
five  hundred  bushels  of  onions  to  the  acre. 
But  take  the  average  dairy,  cotton,  tobacco, 
grain,  or  fruit  farmers,  and  the  persistency 
with  which  most  of  them  have  clung  to  the 
single-crop  system  has  been  one  of  the  great 
and  outstanding  faults  of  American  agri- 
culture. The  tendency  in  recent  years  has 
been  to  overcome,  to  a  certain  extent,  this 
extremely  short-sighted  policy,  but  there  is 
still  room  for  improvement. 
A  beginner  might  just  as  easily  start  out 
43 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

on  the  right  track  as  the  wrong  one.  So, 
whatever  line  of  farming  you  may  decide 
to  embark  upon,  don't  make  the  mistake 
of  concentrating  all  your  energies  and  cap- 
ital on  one  crop.  The  one-crop  system 
was  for  two  generations  the  curse  of  the 
Southern  states.  While  cotton  has  been  the 
source  of  immense  wealth  to  that  section, 
it  has  undoubtedly  been  one  of  its  greatest 
industrial  handicaps.  The  Southerners,  how- 
ever, are  waking  up  to  the  advantages  of 
diversification,  and  we  may  expect  in  the 
next  few  years  a  rapidly  increasing  develop- 
ment of  its  agricultural  resources.  By  plant- 
ing a  few  side-line  crops  one  is  taking  out 
the  best  possible  insurance  against  disaster. 
If  one  product  fails,  there  is  another  to  fall 
back  on.  If  the  blight  or  scab  ruins  the  po- 
tatoes, the  bumper  tomato  output  may  save 
the  day.  If  both  succumb  to  weather  and  in- 
sects, the  apple-trees  in  the  autumn  may  pull 
you  through  the  year.  There  is  altogether 
too  much  dependent  upon  a  single  product  to 
make  it  wise  to  stake  the  success  of  a  whole 
season's  operations  on  it.  There  are  always 
the  uncertainties  of  the  weather,  the  possibil- 
ity of  an  unsettled  market,  or  the  invasion  of 
some  new  pest  that  may  lay  everything  in 

waste  before  it  can  be  got  under  control. 
44 


CROP  DIVERSIFICATION 

The  average  farmer  doesn't  attach  nearly 
the  importance  to  poultry  that  the  industry 
deserves.  Most  farms  have  a  few  chickens 
that  get  their  living  as  best  they  can.  Some 
days  a  few  handfuls  of  grain  are  thrown  out 
to  them,  and  there  are  a  good  many  other 
days  when  they  go  unfed.  They  must 
forage  diligently  or  starve.  Whenever  the 
wives  are  able  to  find  time  from  their  house- 
hold duties  to  give  the  fowls  even  a  moderate 
amount  of  attention,  it  is  surprising  to  note 
the  gratifying  results.  It  is  related  that  a 
certain  thrifty  housewife  took  great  interest 
in  her  chickens,  ducks,  and  turkeys,  and 
kept  an  accurate  record  of  her  sales  for  ten 
years,  not  counting  what  the  family  con- 
sumed. It  was  found  at  the  end  of  ten 
years  that  she  had  sold  two  thousand  dol- 
lars' worth  of  poultry  and  eggs.  The  money, 
as  received,  was  turned  into  the  common 
fund.  In  the  mean  time  the  farm,  costing 
four  thousand  dollars,  had  been  paid  for. 
In  other  words,  while  the  rest  of  the  farm 
operations  supported  the  family,  paid  the 
taxes,  insurance,  interest  on  the  mortgage, 
and  two  hundred  dollars  a  year  on  the  prin- 
cipal, the  woman's  poultry  returns  wiped 
out  half  the  original  debt. 

Some  years  ago  an  acquaintance  of  the 
45 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

writer  quit  the  city  and  started  on  a  small 
farm  in  central  Ohio.  It  seemed  that  the 
fates  were  against  him  from  the  beginning. 
Continual  rains  in  the  spring  put  him  'way 
behind  in  his  planting,  and  this  was  followed 
by  a  drought  of  which  even  the  oldest  in- 
habitant could  recall  no  parallel.  He  saw  all 
his  hard  toil  going  for  naught,  and  he  shud- 
dered as  he  contemplated  his  fertilizer  bill, 
due  in  the  fall.  But  along  with  his  little 
farm  went  an  apple-orchard  of  about  two 
acres  that  had  been  a  hobby  of  the  previous 
owner  of  the  place.  Everything  was  a  failure 
that  first  year  but  the  apples.  They  alone 
weathered  the  drought  and  netted  the 
owner  about  four  hundred  dollars,  so  that 
he  broke  even  for  the  year.  But  for  those 
apples  he  might  have  returned  to  the  city 
and  still  be  a  clerk  in  a  dry-goods  store,  in- 
stead of  one  of  the  biggest  producers  of  hogs 
in  the  Middle  West. 

Money  paid  out  for  stock  feed  is  what 
keeps  many  a  farmer's  nose  to  the  grind- 
stone. Especially  is  this  true  in  the  Eastern 
states.  A  man  with  a  small  herd  of  cows 
and  a  team  of  horses  can  easily  put  all  the 
profits  of  his  farm  in  his  animals'  mangers 
by  depending  on  the  feed-store  for  his  grain. 
In  the  first  place,  there  should  be  a  silo  on 
46 


CROP  DIVERSIFICATION 

the  farm.  I  don't  care  if  you  have  but  six 
cows,  there  should  be  a  silo.  Fill  the  silo 
from  the  corn-field,  retaining  part  of  the 
crop  to  dry,  so  you  will  have  ear  corn  enough 
to  winter  the  horses.  The  remaining  dry 
stalks  may  be  fed  as  roughage.  The  experts 
will  say,  of  course,  that  oats  are  the  best  feed 
for  horses,  and  so  they  are,  but  a  horse  can  get 
through  the  winter  mighty  well  on  corn,  with 
a  little  bran  as  a  laxative.  At  the  price  oats 
have  been  in  recent  years  it  is  nothing  short 
of  folly  to  feed  bought  oats  to  your  team 
all  the  year  around.  Just  be  careful  in  your 
use  of  corn  and  there  will  be  no  trouble.  I 
would  not  be  so  positive  about  this  if  I  had 
not  had  actual  experience  along  this  line 
year  after  year,  and  I  know  whereof  I  speak. 
I  stress  this  point  because  these  stock-feed 
bills  will  make  no  end  of  trouble  for  the 
beginner  unless  he  starts  right  away  to  de- 
vise means  of  heading  them  off. 

Then  again,  if  there  is  no  alfalfa-field  on 
the  farm,  get  one  planted  without  delay. 
There  is  hardly  a  section  in  the  United  States 
where  this  wonderful  plant  will  not  thrive. 
The  government  bulletins  will  give  you  such 
clear  and  explicit  directions  as  to  the  prep- 
aration of  the  soil  that  you  can't  go  wrong. 
With  alfalfa  in  your  barn,  silage  in  your  silo, 
47 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

your  corn-crib  filled,  a  couple  of  pigs  fatten- 
ing in  the  pen,  a  few  cords  of  wood  under 
the  shed,  a  barrel  or  so  of  apples  and  your 
supply  of  cabbage,  potatoes,  turnips,  carrots, 
and  onions  in  the  cellar,  your  problem  for 
that  winter  is  solved  then  and  there.  It  is 
the  stoppage  of  the  little  leaks  at  the  outset 
that  is  going  to  bring  you  success.  I  have 
utterly  failed  in  my  purpose  if  I  have  not 
made  it  clear  that  these  hints  I  have  been 
throwing  out  are  for  the  benefit  of  the  in- 
experienced man  who  is  beginning  in  a  small 
way  to  build  a  foundation  for  bigger  and 
better  things  for  the  future.  If  you  would 
get  a  firm  grip  from  the  very  first,  shut  off 
all  except  vitally  necessary  expenditures  and 
make  the  farm  support  every  living  creature 
on  it  so  far  as  it  is  possible.  After  the  first 
year  or  two,  as  you  learn  to  put  into  prac- 
tice the  ideas  you  have  gained  from  theoreti- 
cal study,  you  will  broaden  out  your  field 
of  operations  in  such  directions  as  are 
prompted  by  your  inclinations,  based  on 
your  own  knowledge  of  agriculture,  so  that 
many  of  the  suggestions  advanced  here  would 
not  then  apply.  Nothing  is  farther  from  the 
thoughts  of  the  writer  than  to  undertake  to 
tell  an  experienced  farmer  how  to  run  his 
own  business,  but  if  the  beginner  can  be 
48 


CROP  DIVERSIFICATION 

directed  along  the  right  road  in  these  days 
of  farm  progress  and  opportunities,  there 
need  be  no  fear,  if  he  enjoys  the  work,  of 
his  not  making  the  journey  safely. 

There  passed  away  not  long  ago  an  aged 
citizen  of  Connecticut  who  for  fifty  years 
dwelt  upon  a  seventy-five-acre  farm.  His 
practice  was  to  make  the  farm  maintain  it- 
self. His  cash  returns  were  small,  but  so 
was  his  cash  outgo.  He  had  so  adjusted  his 
affairs  that  his  net  profits  every  year  were 
derived  from  the  sale  of  four  or  five  milch 
cows  that  he  had  raised  on  feed  that  the 
farm  itself  produced.  It  required  about  two 
years  to  mature  such  an  animal.  He  kept 
good  stock  and  they  brought  top  prices. 
When  he  became  too  feeble  to  work  he  re- 
tired with  a  bank-account  sufficient  to  make 
him  independent  for  the  remainder  of  his 
life.  Meanwhile  he  had  lived  comfortably, 
free  from  the  worries  that  beset  many  a  city 
man,  and  reared  a  large  family,  all  of  whom 
turned  out  to  be  useful  and  respected  men 
and  women.  This  man  farmed  in  the  old- 
fashioned  way,  had  few  labor-saving  tools, 
and  made  little  or  no  effort  to  keep  abreast 
of  agricultural  progress.  That  same  man 
starting  out  to-day,  with  the  advantages  of 

new  methods  and  modern  machinery,  would 
49 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

have  fortune  within  his  grasp.  He  had 
learned  the  secret  of  successful  farming.  A 
farm  that  is  self-supporting  or  approximately 
so  is  bound  to  succeed. 

I  know  there  are  many  pretty  stories  in 
the  books  and  magazines  about  buying  two 
or  three  acres  of  stump  land  somewhere, 
putting  up  a  shack  on  it,  and  getting  rich 
in  a  few  years.  Well,  some  of  the  foreigners 
may  be  able  to  get  a  start  that  way,  and 
many  of  them  do,  perhaps,  but  we  Americans, 
with  our  different  standard  of  living,  would 
not  be  satisfied  to  do  so,  and  I  do  not  believe 
many  of  us  would  succeed  if  we  did  under- 
take such  an  enterprise.  The  kind  of  city 
man  the  writer  has  in  mind  would  acquire 
a  general  farm  where,  with  the  use  of  labor- 
saving  machinery,  he  could  grow  enough 
even  the  first  year  to  keep  expenses  down  to 
a  minimum.  If  he  has  not  much  to  take 
to  market  that  first  year  he  will  also  not 
be  going  into  town  very  often  for  supplies. 
Friends,  I  had  to  learn  the  things  I  am  tell- 
ing here  by  some  pretty  hard  knocks.  I 
bought  on  credit  in  the  spring,  counting  on 
crops  in  the  fall  that  did  not  materialize. 
So  during  your  first  year  at  farming  purchase 
just  as  little  as  you  can.  Husband  your  re- 
sources and  make  the  land  feed  your  live 
50 


CROP  DIVERSIFICATION 

stock  and  family.  Later  on  it  may  be  that 
you  can  buy  many  of  the  necessities  that  it 
would  not  pay  you  to  produce,  but  until 
you  graduate  from  the  ranks  of  the  noviti- 
ate and  can  feel  that  you  are  a  full-fledged 
farmer,  just  strive  to  keep  down  expenses 
and  let  the  profits  wait  awhile.  They  will 
come  in  due  time.  There  is  no  royal  road 
to  wealth  in  agriculture  any  more  than  there 
is  a  royal  road  to  learning. 


VIJ 

THE   FARM  ITS  OWN  FERTILIZER-PLANT 

ONE  of  the  first  things  you  will  learn  in 
your  seeding,  tilling,  and  harvesting  is 
that  each  one  of  your  crops  requires  and 
exacts  its  peculiar  nourishment.  If  the  land 
is  deficient  in  the  soil  elements  needed — and 
most  lands  that  have  been  cultivated  for  a 
number  of  years  are  deficient  to  a  more  or 
less  extent  in  the  necessary  plant  foods — 
then  you  will  have  to  supply  the  shortage 
yourself.  But  how?  Well,  there  are  three 
principal  methods.  Scattering  manure  over 
the  land,  going  to  town  and  buying  commer- 
cial fertilizers,  and  letting  nature  supply  you 
free  of  charge.  The  last-mentioned  proposi- 
tion sounds  reasonable  enough,  doesn't  it? 
Yet  there  are  a  great  many  men  making  their 
living  on  farms  who  fail  to  draw  upon  a 
great  and  never-ending  source  of  plant 
nourishment  that  is  everywhere  around  them, 

52 


FARM  AND  FERTILIZER-PLANT 

begging,  so  to  speak,  to  be  put  to  some  use- 
ful agricultural  purpose.  These  men  have 
not  yet  realized  the  importance  of  the  nitro- 
gen-producing legumes  and  the  advantages 
of  crop  rotation  as  a  means  of  preventing 
the  land  from  being  depleted  of  its  life-giving 
substances. 

The  beginner,  even  before  he  starts  his 
farm  work,  should  study  up  on  this  question 
of  fertilizers  and  legumes,  so  that  he  will 
have  at  least  a  general  idea  of  the  situation. 
As  farmers  enlarge  their  operations  they 
must  use  increasing  quantities  of  commercial 
fertilizers,  but  in  purchasing  it  they  should 
understand  what  they  are  getting  and  how 
to  apply  it  to  the  soil  if  they  are  to  secure 
their  money's  worth.  Alfalfa,  clover,  cow- 
peas,  soy  beans,  and  other  legumes  obtain 
nitrogen  and  carbon  and  store  it  for  succeed- 
ing crops  to  feed  upon.  By  sandwiching 
these  legumes  in  between  other  crops  we  are 
enabled  to  maintain  the  fertility  of  the  land 
without  reducing  our  harvests.  The  use  of 
barn-yard  manure,  wood  ashes,  and  the 
plowing  under  of  green  crops  in  connection 
with  the  legumes,  will  help  the  beginner  to 
cut  down  his  fertilizer  expenses  while  he  is 
familiarizing  himself  with  the  profitable 
utilization  of  the  commercial  plant  foods. 
5  53 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

Alfalfa,  besides  being  the  best  all-round 
forage  that  the  farm  produces,  is  the  best  of 
the  legumes  as  a  renewer  and  conserver  of 
the  soil.  It  has  a  remarkable  system  of 
roots  which  sometimes  penetrate  to  a  depth 
of  twenty  feet.  Millions  of  putrefying  bac- 
teria make  their  homes  in  the  tubercles  of 
the  root  system  of  one  plant.  Through  the 
action  of  these  bacteria  nitrogen  is  taken  di- 
rectly from  the  air  and  added  to  the  soil  in 
such  form  that  it  can  be  used  by  other  crops. 
Since  nitrogen  is  one  of  the  soil  elements 
first  to  become  exhausted,  it  is  clear  that 
production  of  alfalfa  can  do  much  to  reclaim 
worn-out  soils.  The  deep-rooting  system  of 
the  alfalfa  plant  also  enables  it  to  bring 
minerals  from  the  lower  layer  of  the  soil 
and  deposit  them  near  the  surface  where 
other  plants  can  use  them.  The  roots  upon 
decaying  add  much  organic  matter  to  the 
soil  in  the  form  of  humus.  The  abundant 
roots  also  increase  the  porosity  of  the  soil 
and  so  favor  drainage  and  the  introduction 
of  air  to  the  roots  of  the  growing  plants.  If 
many  experienced  farmers  paid  more  atten- 
tion to  this  subject  there  would  be  a  vast 
sum  of  money  saved  every  year  in  this 
country  on  fertilizer  bills.  Too  many  farm- 
ers use  expensive  commercial  fertilizers  indis- 

54 


FARM  AND  FERTILIZER-PLANT 

criminately.  It  would  be  the  part  of  wis- 
dom to  go  slow  in  the  beginning  in  your  pur- 
chase of  the  prepared  fertilizers.  There  are 
reputable  dealers  who  deliver  what  you  pay 
for  and  there  are  some  who  do  not.  Another 
point  you  must  figure  on,  and  that  is  whether 
or  not  you  are  going  to  get  out  of  the  crop 
what  you  put  into  it  in  the  form  of  high- 
priced  potash  or  nitrate  or  phosphate.  Con- 
sult the  nearest  experiment  station  before  you 
spend  a  lot  of  money,  possibly  to  little  pur- 
pose. Send  the  experts  a  sample  of  your 
soil  and  they  will  tell  you  what  sort  of  fer- 
tilizer you  will  need  for  a  particular  crop. 

Now  we  will  get  back  to  the  question  of 
the  legumes  and  rotation.  I  would  not  dwell 
so  persistently  on  this  point  if  it  were  not 
the  real  basis  of  your  undertaking.  It  is  the 
foundation  of  agriculture,  in  fact.  If  the 
land  is  sucked  dry  of  its  vital  elements  the 
whole  structure  of  farming  crumbles.  We 
know  how  it  has  been  with  the  rich  prairies 
of  the  West,  what  abundant  grain  crops  those 
lands  yielded  in  the  early  years  of  their 
settlement,  but  which  gradually  decreased 
as  the  same  crops  were  grown  upon  them 
season  after  season.  The  Southern  lands 
have  suffered  in  like  manner  from  this  failure 
to  adopt  the  rotation  plan.    The  writer  was 

55 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

born  and  brought  up  on  a  cotton-plantation 
in  central  Alabama.  No  one  in  our  com- 
munity apparently  ever  gave  a  thought  to 
any  process  of  soil  recuperation.  My  father 
was  reckoned  a  successful  planter  in  those 
days.  He  had  about  one  thousand  acres  in 
cotton  and  corn.  There  was  one  section  of 
the  farm  known  as  "the  battle-field/ '  where 
a  celebrated  engagement  between  two  Indian 
tribes  was  fought  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
For  more  than  thirty  years  "the  battle-field" 
was  planted  in  cotton,  one  of  the  most  vo- 
racious of  all  the  plants.  Is  it  any  wonder 
that  my  father  got  one-half  bale  to  the  acre, 
even  with  guano,  where  my  grandfather  be- 
fore him  had  harvested  a  bale  with  no  fer- 
tilizer at  all?  Of  course,  it  is  different  to- 
day, but  at  the  time  to  which  I  refer  it  was 
the  universal  practice  to  use  the  same  land 
for  the  same  crops  year  in  and  year  out. 

We  know  that  a  field  of  one  hundred  acres, 
devoted  entirely  for  five  years  to  a  rotation 
of  clover,  wheat,  corn,  oats,  and  potatoes, 
would  yield  a  far  greater  output  than  would 
that  same  field  if  divided  into  equal  parts 
and  devoted  to  some  one  of  these  products 
for  five  years.  As  stated  before,  each  plant 
requires  and  exacts  its  peculiar  nourishment. 
It  may  be  that  the  five  plants  above  named 

56 


FARM  AND  FERTILIZER-PLANT 

all  require  lime,  potash,  phosphorus,  nitro- 
gen, carbon,  etc.,  which,  besides  water,  are 
the  chief  elements  of  vegetable  structure; 
but  if  so,  they  require  them  in  unequal  pro- 
portions or  quantities.  Grown  each  on  its 
own  twenty  acres  throughout  five  years,  one 
will  have  absorbed  all  or  nearly  all  of  the 
potash  in  its  division,  yet  hardly  have  touched 
the  lime,  and  so  on,  while,  had  the  hundred 
acres  been  sown  in  rotation  or  succession  en- 
tirely to  one  and  then  to  another  of  these 
crops,  or  had  the  five  been  alternated  from 
portion  to  portion  with  each  succeeding  year, 
they  might  have  yielded  abundantly,  yet  left 
no  part  of  the  soil  depleted  of  any  single 
element. 

In  years  gone  by  the  farmer  had  little  use 
for  agricultural  chemistry.  The  virgin  soil 
was  so  well  supplied  with  all  the  elements 
needed  for  plant  nutrition  that  the  only 
thing  for  him  to  do  was  to  plant  and  till  and 
reap  a  bountiful  harvest.  Times  and  con- 
ditions have  changed.  The  land  does  not 
respond  so  promptly  by  merely  scratching  its 
back  with  plow  and  harrow.  It  has  grown 
weary  and  hungry.  It  now  looks  for  food 
and  coaxing  and  petting  before  it  can  be 
made  to  smile  with  bountiful  harvests.     The 

farming  of  the  old  days  was  based  upon  the 
57 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

generosity  of  nature  and  the  original  wealth 
of  the  soil.  The  farming  of  the  present  day- 
is  changing  more  and  more  to  a  process  of 
manufacturing  crops  out  of  raw  materials 
largely  supplied  by  man.  The  soil  only 
serves  as  a  medium  and  implement  of 
manufacture. 

The  development  of  the  potential  sources 
of  fertilizer  materials  in  the  United  States 
has  been  commanding  special  attention  in 
recent  years,  and  during  the  world  war  this 
matter  assumed  an  importance  greater  than 
ever  before.  We  are  destined  soon  to  be- 
come independent  of  the  other  nations  for 
our  fertilizer  supplies.  William  H.  Wagga- 
man,  one  of  our  government  scientists, 
points  out  that  only  a  few  years  ago  it  was 
generally  believed,  even  by  the  best  in- 
formed, that  the  Stassfurt  deposits  in  Ger- 
many would  be  the  world's  most  economic 
sources  of  potash  salts  for  almost  an  indefinite 
period.  It  now  appears  possible  that  when 
trade  relations  are  restored  between  the 
warring  nations  this  country  may  have  firm- 
ly established  a  potash  industry  of  its  own. 
The  recovery  of  potash  from  partly  desiccated 
lakes  and  from  the  giant  kelps  of  the  Pacific 
coast  is  now  being  profitably  accomplished, 
and  the  saving  of  the  potash  volatilized  in 

68 


FARM  AND  FERTILIZER-PLANT 

blast  furnaces  and  in  the  burning  of  cement 
has  been  demonstrated  as  commercially 
feasible.  The  latter  two  sources,  if  utilized 
to  their  fullest  extent,  are  alone  amply  suf- 
ficient to  meet  the  annual  demand  of  the 
fertilizer  industry  for  potash  salts. 

Since  combined  nitrogen  is  not  only  one 
of  the  most  important  fertilizer  ingredients, 
but  is  essential  also  in  the  manufacture  of 
military  explosives,  the  war  has  done  much 
toward  stimulating  effort  in  recovering  and 
producing  nitrogen  compounds.  The  modern 
by-product  coke-oven  is  gradually  replacing 
the  old  beehive  type,  and  therefore  am- 
monia is  being  recovered  in  ever-increasing 
quantities  from  the  coking  of  bituminous 
coal.  Moreover,  processes  for  the  fixation  of 
atmospheric  nitrogen  are  being  so  perfected 
that  it  is  only  a  question  of  time  when  an 
adequate  supply  of  nitrogen  compounds  is 
assured  our  agricultural  interests. 

The  third  important  fertilizer  ingredient 
is  phosphoric  acid,  which  is  the  basis  of 
nearly  all  mixed  fertilizers,  and  is  therefore 
applied  to  the  soil  in  far  greater  quantities 
than  either  potash  or  nitrogen  compounds. 
It  is  gratifying  to  know  that  this  country 
possesses  greater  resources  of  phosphoric  acid 
than  any  other  nation.  Not  only  have  we 
59 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

supplied  our  own  agricultural  demands,  but 
for  years  we  have  been  helping  to  maintain 
the  crop-producing  power  of  European  coun- 
tries by  shipping  them  annually  vast  quanti- 
ties of  phosphatic  materials.  Though  there 
are  a  number  of  commercial  sources  of  phos- 
phoric acid,  such  as  basic  slag,  guano,  bones, 
and  other  organic  substances,  by  far  the 
greater  quantity  used  for  fertilizer  purposes 
is  derived  from  phosphorite  or  amorphous 
phosphate  of  lime,  of  which  there  are  enor- 
mous deposits  in  Florida,  Tennessee,  Utah, 
Idaho,  Wyoming,  and  Montana,  and  smaller 
deposits  in  South  Carolina,  Arkansas,  Ken- 
tucky, and  Virginia. 

As  this  is  not  a  text-book  on  farming,  no 
attempt  will  be  made  to  go  into  details  of 
the  use  of  fertilizers  and  the  practice  of  crop 
rotation.  Even  should  the  writer  deem  him- 
self qualified  to  give  such  expert  advice, 
which  he  does  not,  it  would  be  beyond  the 
province  of  this  small  volume.  He  may  be 
permitted  at  least  to  stir  your  interest  and 
direct  you  along  the  way  of  acquiring  such 
information  from  those  who  are  able  to  en- 
lighten you.  This  is  a  very  important  sub- 
ject and  one  into  which  every  farmer  should 
delve  deep  if  he  would  secure  the  most  satis- 
factory returns  from  his  labor  and  invest- 
60 


FARM  AND  FERTILIZER-PLANT 

ment.  How  much  may  be  taken  from  the 
land  and  how  much  reserve  left  in  the  soil, 
and  yet  maintain  fertility  and  the  most 
profitable  production,  is  one  of  the  biggest 
problems  the  scientific  farmer  is  called  upon 
to  solve.  The  farmer,  as  a  manufacturer  of 
grains,  fruits,  and  vegetables,  finds  a  thorough 
acquaintance  not  only  with  the  machinery 
of  nature  which  furnishes  him  with  his  motive 
power,  but  also  with  the  various  raw  materials 
of  which  he  has  to  construct  his  products, 
fully  as  indispensable  to  the  highest  success 
as  the  acquaintance  with  the  various  ores  is 
for  the  manufacturer  of  steel  or  the  familiarity 
with  the  different  grades  of  cotton  and  wool 
is  for  the  manufacturer  of  cloth. 

Knowing  in  advance  the  importance  of 
this  phase  of  farming,  the  novice  should  con- 
sult experienced  men  in  mapping  out  his 
crops.  As  I  have  suggested  before,  do  not 
hesitate  to  call  upon  the  experiment  stations 
or  the  government  agencies  for  information 
and  advice.  Remember  these  men  are  all 
specialists  in  their  respective  departments 
and  they  are  daily  aiding  men  who  have 
been  farming  all  their  fives.  So  do  not  be 
bashful.  It  is  their  business  to  help  the 
farmers  and  they  cheerfully  answer  all 
questions. 

61 


VIII 

IMPORTANCE   OF  FARM  MACHINERY 

THIS  is  an  age  of  farm  machinery,  and  no 
farmer  can  hope  to  keep  abreast  of  the 
rapid  advances  in  agriculture  who  does  not 
make  every  possible  use  of  labor-saving  im- 
plements, which  are  doing  away  with  the 
drudgery  of  the  old  days,  at  the  same  time 
quadrupling  one's  efficiency.  Whether  you 
have  a  thousand  acres  or  ten  acres,  you  will 
find  modern  tools  indispensable.  Years  ago 
it  was  a  common  sight  in  the  West  to  see 
fifty  men  and  teams  plowing  or  harvesting 
on  a  big  grain-ranch.  To-day  on  that  same 
ranch  a  one  -  hundred  -  horse  -  power  tractor 
plows,  sows,  and  harrows  at  the  same  time 
from  eighty  to  one  hundred  acres  a  day  or 
from  ten  to  twelve  acres  an  hour,  accom- 
plishing the  same  work  that  formerly  re- 
quired the  fifty  men  and  teams.  The  har- 
vester has  also  been  a  boon  to  the  West, 
02 


IMPORTANCE  OF  FARM  MACHINERY 

opening  up  the  prairies  decades  earlier  than 
otherwise  would  have  been  possible.  I  have 
before  me  some  figures  showing  the  extent 
of  the  economies  in  production  effected  in 
this  era  of  machine  agriculture.  It  is  stated 
that  in  1830  it  required  more  than  three 
hours  of  labor  to  raise  a  bushel  of  wheat, 
while  in  1896  the  time  had  been  reduced 
to  ten  minutes.  In  1850  the  labor  repre- 
sented in  a  bushel  of  corn  was  four  and  one- 
half  hours,  while  in  1894  it  had  been  cut 
to  forty-one  minutes.  Undoubtedly,  since 
these  statistics  were  compiled  there  have 
been  still  further  savings,  but  I  have  no  such 
tables  at  hand. 

"The  agricultural  engineers/ '  says  a  West- 
ern writer,  "are  holding  out  promises  of  a 
wide  and  successful  application  of  electricity 
to  the  needs  of  the  farm.  The  farmer  is  a 
large  user  of  power  and  employs  a  great 
variety  of  mechanical  devices,  but  until 
lately  his  unfamiliarity  with  power  apparatus 
and  the  machinery  manufacturers'  unfamil- 
iarity with  farm  methods  and  needs  have 
stood  in  the  way  of  an  adjustment  advan- 
tageous to  both  sides.  This  difficulty  is 
being  overcome."  Central  extension  systems 
have  been  established  from  which  electricity 
is  being  sold  to  farmers.    Within  the  next  few 

63 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

years  the  progressive  farmer  will  have  his 
electric  lights,  electric  power  for  his  milking- 
machines  and  cream-separators,  wood-saw- 
ing, threshing,  and  so  on,  which  will  enable 
him  to  increase  his  profits  and  render  his 
occupation  and  his  home  life  more  attractive. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  the  rapid  increase 
in  popularity  of  the  light  motor  tractor. 
These  wonderful  machines  may  be  put  to  a 
score  of  uses,  from  plowing  to  drawing  a 
load  of  hay  to  market.  They  are  just  now 
getting  a  foothold  in  the  East.  For  a  time 
our  Eastern  men  had  an  idea  that  the 
tractor  was  adaptable  only  to  the  larger 
areas  of  the  West  and  South,  but  that  notion 
has  been  brushed  aside  by  actual  demon- 
strations on  hundreds  of  comparatively  small 
farms  in  the  Northeastern  states.  They  are 
inexpensive  and  easily  operated;  a  woman 
or  a  half-grown  boy,  running  one  of  these 
tractors,  can  do  the  work  of  several  men  and 
teams. 

The  beginner  should  bear  in  mind  that 

machinery   is   absolutely   necessary   to   his 

success,  and,  as  I  have  pointed  out  in  a 

previous  chapter,  it  would  be  advisable  to 

get  a  farm  already  equipped,  or  at  least 

partially  so.    There  will  be  so  many  expenses 

the  first  year  that  the  purchase  of  any  con- 
64 


rft&'i 


I'h.1  ••/■■    *  % ., 

m 

IMPORTANCE  OF  FARM  MACHINERY 

siderable  amount  of  new  tools  may  be  out 
of  the  question.  It  is  well  to  know  in  a 
general  way  about  what  implements  will  be 
needed.  So,  after  you  have  determined  upon 
what  line  of  farming  you  will  take  up,  make 
a  thorough  inquiry  into  what  machinery  such 
a  farm  would  need  to  do  the  work  efficiently 
and  economically.  In  this  way,  when  you 
are  making  your  inspection,  with  your  list 
in  hand,  you  can  check  off  what  tools  are 
already  on  the  farm,  and  then  decide  if  your 
capital  will  permit  of  your  buying  those  that 
are  missing. 

If  you  are  in  the  South  and  plan  a  general 
farm,  with  cotton  as  the  principal  cash  crop, 
get  in  touch  with  some  cotton-planter  and 
cross-examine  him  as  to  your  requirements. 
If  you  have  chosen  dairying,  interrogate  some 
experienced  dairy-farmer;  and  so  with  re- 
gard to  trucking,  orcharding,  or  any  other  of 
the  various  branches  of  agriculture,  ask  ques- 
tions beforehand.  Books,  bulletins,  etc.,  will 
serve  you  well,  but  the  great  trouble  about 
them  is  you  can't  ask  them  a  question.  Their 
general  information  may  not  throw  light  on 
some  exceptional  point  that  relates  to  your 
particular  case. 

Let  us  assume  that  for  years  you  have  been 

doing  office  work  in  the  city.    Your  general 
65 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

health  is  good,  but  you  are  doubtful  if  you 
will  be  equal  to  the  heavy  work  of  a  farm. 
There  is  no  occasion  to  hesitate  for  a  moment 
on  that  account.  This  is  where  the  labor- 
saving  machinery  comes  in.  If  you  can 
drive  a  team  of  horses  a  sulky-plow  will 
enable  you  to  prepare  the  land  as  well,  if 
not  better,  than  the  most  experienced  farmer 
could  possibly  do  it  with  a  walking-plow, 
and  the  work  will  be  very  little  harder  than 
running  an  automobile.  If  your  capital  is 
not  sufficient  for  a  small  tractor  or  your 
farm  operations  do  not  warrant  such  a  ma- 
chine, then  try  to  get  a  riding-plow.  If  you 
had  the  physical  strength  to  handle  a  walk- 
ing-plow the  chances  are  that  you  would 
make  a  botch  of  the  plowing  the  first  season. 
Manipulating  a  two-horse  walking-plow  looks 
easy  from  the  roadside,  but  it  is  the  hardest 
sort  of  toil  even  for  a  skilled  man  versed  in 
all  the  little  tricks  and  turns  to  save  his 
muscles.  An  inexperienced  man  puts  about 
three  times  as  much  energy  into  such  labor 
as  an  experienced  farmer  employs. 

When  it  comes  to  planting  get  your  ma- 
chine into  play  and  do  the  job  in  one-tenth 
of  the  time,  much  more  efficiently,  and  with 
a  minimum  of  exertion.    Perhaps  you  have 

acquired  a  farm  of  twenty  acres  or  so  of  till- 
66 


IMPORTANCE  OF  FARM  MACHINERY 

able  land,  and  want  to  put  in  about  six 
acres  of  corn.  A  corn-planter  wall  drop  the 
seed  and  the  fertilizer  as  fast  as  the  team 
of  horses  can  walk.  Furthermore,  it  will 
check-row  the  field  so  that  it  can  be  culti- 
vated both  ways.  This  check-rowing  rele- 
gates the  old-fashioned  hoeing  to  a  rear  seat. 
Besides  being  back-breaking  work,  hoeing  is 
entirely  unnecessary  in  a  corn-field.  With 
your  riding-cultivator  you  can  clean  out  the 
weeds  in  that  six-acre  field  in  one  day's  work, 
whereas  at  the  end  of  a  week,  if  the  weeds 
were  luxuriant — and  the  most  barren  land 
always  does  produce  them  in  profusion — our 
good  brother  with  the  hoe  probably  would 
be  just  about  rounding  the  half-way  post. 
So  you  see  by  utilizing  machinery  you  con- 
serve energy  and  you  save  time,  and  a  farmer 
needs  a  great  deal  of  both  if  he  hopes  to  get 
ahead. 

Farming  is  a  continual  battle  against  weeds 
and  insects,  but  with  labor-saving  imple- 
ments both  may  be  easily  kept  under  con- 
trol, provided  the  " stitch  in  time"  is  taken. 
Be  careful  in  laying  out  your  work  so  that 
you  do  not  get  too  far  behind.  Once  you  fall 
back  a  few  days,  it  is  doubtful  if  you  ever 
catch  up  with  the  procession  that  season. 

Another  piece  of  machinery  that  is  very 

67 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

necessary  on  an  up-to-date  farm  is  a  gasolene- 
engine.  Some  farmers  who  own  automobiles 
use  their  car  motors  to  grind  stock  feed,  saw 
wood,  etc.  Manure-spreaders  are  also  valu- 
able. Hauling  manure  from  the  barn-yard 
to  the  field  in  a  farm  wagon  and  scattering 
it  with  a  pitchfork  is  a  tedious  and  laborious 
task,  and,  besides,  the  work  is  poorly  done. 
A  spreader  distributes  evenly  and  quickly 
while  you  are  at  your  ease  on  the  driver's 
seat. 

A  wood-sawing  outfit  is  a  most  important 
farm  adjunct,  too.  Besides  using  it  for  your 
own  supply  of  household  fuel,  there  are  many 
opportunities  of  sawing  for  your  neighbors. 
In  this  connection  I  would  call  attention  to 
the  constant  demand  for  wood  in  the  cities. 
If  possible  get  a  place  with  a  good  acreage 
of  woodland.  In  the  winter  months,  when 
the  regular  farm  work  is  slack,  you  may  add 
a  snug  sum  to  your  bank-account  by  cutting, 
sawing,  and  marketing  your  wood.  It  is 
just  as  easy  to  buy  a  farm  with  wood  on  it 
as  it  is  without  it.  I  know  a  man  who  ac- 
quired a  farm  on  credit  and  paid  off  the  en- 
tire mortgage  with  the  proceeds  from  the 
wood  alone,  and  then  had  enough  to  keep 
him  supplied  with  fuel  for  an  indefinite  time. 

Having  acquired  the  necessary  machinery, 

68 


IMPORTANCE  OF  FARM  MACHINERY 

be  sure  to  take  care  of  it.  How  many  times 
have  you  driven  along  country  roads  and 
seen  a  plow  here,  a  mowing-machine  there, 
or  a  wagon  yonder,  standing  outdoors  ex- 
posed to  the  weather?  When  a  machine 
has  done  its  day's  work  it  should  be  shel- 
tered. A  wise  old  farmer  once  told  me  that 
one  night  in  the  open  air  for  a  farm  imple- 
ment was  equal  in  wear  and  tear  to  one  day's 
usage.  I  believe  it  is  true.  When  you  put 
a  piece  of  machinery  away  for  the  winter 
think  about  the  condition  it  will  be  in  when 
you  need  it  again.  Give  it  a  good  oiling. 
A  coat  of  varnish  on  a  plow  will  prevent 
rust  during  a  period  of  idleness.  Trying  to 
turn  a  furrow  with  a  rusty  plow  in  the  damp 
earth  in  the  springtime  will  speedily  con? 
vince  you  of  the  value  of  a  little  foresight. 
After  a  few  hours  of  use  a  rusty  mold-board 
will  show  the  desired  polish,  but  meanwhile 
your  work  has  been  indifferently  done,  and 
the  chances  are  that  you  have  indulged  in 
some  expressions  scarcely  appropriate  in 
polite  company.  If  there  is  insufficient  shel- 
ter for  your  tools  provide  it  as  quickly  as 
possible.  It  will  be  one  of  the  best  invest- 
ments you  ever  made. 

Machinery  is  revolutionizing  agriculture. 
Remarkable  as  are  the  accomplishments  of 

6  69 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

the  past,  more  surprising  things  are  yet  to 
come.  A  young  man  just  beginning  his 
career  or  a  man  who  is  starting  out  anew, 
for  one  reason  or  another,  very  naturally 
and  very  properly  would  prefer  a  business 
that  held  out  something  for  the  future.  You 
may  be  sure  that  farming  is  such  a  business. 
The  inventors  will  see  to  it  that  the  tillers 
of  the  soil  keep  pace  with  the  march  of 
progress. 


IX 

EDUCATION    AND    CO-OPEKATION 

THERE  was  a  time  when  so-called  book 
farming  was  held  in  more  or  less  derision 
among  the  rural  population.  I  hear  some 
farmers  even  to-day  say:  "Oh  well,  that 
professor  is  a  good  talker,  but  we  can't  con- 
duct our  business  on  theories  of  that  kind. 
His  advice  sounds  all  right,  but  when  it 
comes  to  putting  it  into  practice,  why,  that's 
a  horse  of  another  color."  These  men  are 
the  reactionaries  in  agriculture.  They  dread 
innovations.  Those  striving  to  improve  our 
conditions  have  encountered  no  more  stub- 
born obstacles  than  this  blind  prejudice  of 
men  who  cannot  be  brought  to  an  under- 
standing of  what  education  means  to  the 
farmer.  Happily,  these  non-progressives  are 
dwindling  away.  It  is  now  universally  recog- 
nized that  the  farmer  schooled  in  the  nature 

and  properties  of  soils,  the  laws  which  govern 
71 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

vegetation  and  the  elements  essential  to 
form  thrifty  plants  and  animals,  will  learn 
from  experience,  not  less,  but  more,  than 
his  uninstructed  neighbor.  If  a  beginner 
waits  until  he  gets  into  actual  farm  work 
before  taking  up  his  studies,  and  should  rely 
upon  experience  alone  to  guide  him  aright, 
he  will  make  a  mistake.  There  is  no  rhyme 
or  reason  in  starting  out  haphazard,  expect- 
ing to  master  farming  problems  through  the 
errors  you  make.  A  few  weeks  of  intensive 
reading  will  prove  of  great  value.  I  am 
speaking  of  a  family  man  who  intends  to 
step  out  of  city  work  directly  to  the  farm. 
As  to  a  young  man  planning  a  course  at  an 
agricultural  college,  I  believe  it  would  be  best 
for  him  to  get  a  little  practical  experience 
before  taking  up  his  college  studies.  Other- 
wise he  might  spend  several  years  at  college 
and  discover,  after  all,  that  he  did  not  care 
for  farming. 

I  would  not  discourage  the  man  who  de- 
sires to  become  a  farmer  by  depicting  the 
tilling  of  the  soil  as  too  formidable  an  under- 
taking, but  it  is  well  to  realize,  nevertheless, 
that  farming  is  something  big  and  that  suc- 
cess in  agriculture  is  the  measure  of  the  in- 
telligent effort  put  into  it.  If  "  genius  is  an 
immense  capacity  for  taking  pains,"  so  is 

72 


EDUCATION  AND  CO-OPERATION 

successful  farming  the  result  of  our  earnest- 
ness of  purpose,  our  steady  and  conscientious 
labor,  and  the  application  of  our  best  thought 
to  the  tasks  that  daily  confront  us.  Agri- 
culture lays  its  contributions  upon  geology, 
chemistry,  mechanics,  metallurgy,  zoology, 
and  medicine — in  a  word,  in  the  language  of 
Edmund  Burke,  "it  levies  upon  the  spoils 
of  all  the  sciences.' '  Some  one  has  said  that 
"he  who  causes  two  blades  of  grass  to  grow 
where  one  grew  before  is  esteemed  a  public 
benefactor,  but  he  is  more  than  this.  He  is 
an  artist.  And  if  he  understands  the  proc- 
ess through  which  he  attains  this  result  he 
is  a  man  of  science." 

They  used  to  say  the  agricultural  colleges 
were  educating  the  men  away  from  the  farm, 
but  this  fallacy  has  long  since  been  exploded. 
If  a  boy  decides  to  stay  on  the  farm  with  his 
father  it  is  the  height  of  that  father's  am- 
bition, if  he  is  a  man  of  progress,  to  send  the 
son  to  the  agricultural  college.  He  knows  he 
will  come  back  a  better  farmer.  His  prac- 
tical experience  will  enable  him  to  derive 
double  benefit  from  his  studies.  What  would 
we  do  without  our  agricultural  publications? 
Too  much  cannot  be  said  in  praise  of  the 
help  they  have  been  to  our  farming  com- 
munities. A  farmer  who  does  not  read  his 
73 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

technical  journals  is  either  standing  still  or 
retrograding  in  his  business.  The  Federal 
and  the  state  departments  of  agriculture  are 
coming  more  and  more  in  direct  contact  with 
the  rural  population  through  co-operative 
demonstration  work,  the  county  agents,  and 
the  experiment  stations. 

The  foundation  for  effective  work  along 
the  line  of  betterment  of  farm  conditions, 
however,  is  successful  co-operation  among 
the  farmers  themselves.  We  have  learned 
that  individualism,  no  matter  how  extreme, 
has  its  limitations.  I  know  a  New  England 
farmer  who  adopted  a  policy  of  "go  it  alone." 
With  two  grown  sons  to  help  him  he  felt  it 
to  his  advantage  to  "paddle  his  own  canoe' ' 
and  let  his  neighbors  do  likewise.  He 
neither  borrowed  nor  lent  an  implement. 
When  silo-filling  time  came  in  September  and 
the  residents  round  about  gathered  first  at 
one  place  and  then  another,  making  it  easier 
and  quicker  for  all,  this  man  held  aloof. 
It  was  the  same  with  the  threshing,  or  corn- 
husking,  or  any  of  the  numerous  other  oc- 
casions on  which  the  farmers  nowadays  jump 
in  and  help  one  another.  The  neighbors  de- 
cided to  improve  their  cattle  and  " chipped' ' 
in  for  a  thousand-dollar  bull  that  was  a 

blessing    to    that    community.    My    friend 

74 


EDUCATION  AND  CO-OPERATION 

thought  his  own  scrub  bull  was  good  enough, 
so  he  continued  to  raise  a  certain  number 
of  ' l  boarder ' '  cows.  In  all  matters  of  mutual 
welfare  he  was  an  outsider,  a  victim  of  his 
own  short-sightedness  and  lack  of  enterprise. 
He  was  not  a  failure  as  a  farmer,  by  any 
means;  on  the  contrary,  he  had  been  fairly 
successful,  but  what  success  he  achieved  was 
in  spite  of  his  mistaken  policy  and  not  be- 
cause of  it.  He  would  have  derived  infinitely 
more  satisfaction  out  of  his  work,  would  have 
been  a  far  more  desirable  neighbor  and  un- 
questionably enjoyed  a  larger  prosperity,  if 
he  had  not  drawn  himself  into  a  shell  and 
shut  himself  off  from  all  business  relations 
with  his  fellow-citizens. 

As  an  instance  of  the  wisdom  of  farm  co- 
operation, a  neighbor  was  telling  me  how  a 
rural  community  in  Vermont  saved  the 
farmers  a  heavy  loss  by  organizing  a  dairy 
company.  A  milk  concern,  through  which 
the  dairymen  had  been  shipping  their  milk, 
went  into  bankruptcy.  The  milk-plant  was 
to  close  in  a  few  weeks,  leaving  the  dairy- 
men without  a  means  of  disposing  of  their 
product.  The  dairymen's  claims  against  the 
company  were  covered  by  a  bond  of  $15,000. 
The  farm-bureau  president,  after  conferring 

with  the  county  agent,  called  a  meeting  of  the 

75 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

executive  committee.  As  the  result  of  this 
meeting  a  committee  was  appointed  to  at- 
tempt to  interest  the  farmers  in  purchasing 
the  plant.  A  creamery-equipment  expert  was 
secured  from  the  state  Department  of  Agri- 
culture to  appraise  the  value  of  the  plant. 
Later,  a  meeting  of  the  patrons  was  called 
and  it  was  decided  to  organize  a  co-operative 
dairy  company  and  purchase  the  milk-plant. 
The  co  -  operative  company  assumed  the 
claims  of  the  farmers  and  issued  stock  to 
cover  the  cost.  The  quick  action  was  pos- 
sible because  of  the  county  farm  -  bureau 
organization. 

The  beginner  should  lose  no  time  in  at- 
taching himself  to  the  co-operative  associa- 
tions of  one  sort  and  another  in  his  neigh- 
borhood. Your  work  will  be  made  lighter 
and  more  remunerative  and  the  intercourse 
with  the  good  people  around  you  will  estab- 
lish friendships  that  will  be  a  source  of 
gratification  deep  and  abiding. 

One  of  the  most  beneficial  developments 
in  the  way  of  co-operation  is  that  of  buying 
and  selling.  The  newspapers  print  many 
columns  about  community  markets,  central 
selling-stations,  "from  producer  to  con- 
sumer," etc.,  but  they  have  had  very  little 

to  say  about  the  equally  important  progress 
76 


EDUCATION  AND  CO-OPERATION 

that  the  farmers  are  making  toward  cheaper 
purchasing  of  their  own  supplies.  One  must 
read  the  farm  journals  to  keep  informed  of 
the  latter,  as  the  question  is  of  no  particular 
interest  except  to  those  directly  concerned. 
Grain  or  fertilizer  by  the  car-load  comes 
many  dollars  cheaper  than  could  be  obtained 
at  a  feed-store  by  the  bag.  The  granges  and 
other  organizations  long  ago  inaugurated  the 
neighborhood  buying  plan.  The  saving  thus 
effected  amounts  to  many  hundreds  of  dol- 
lars a  year,  even  in  a  small  community. 
Many  farmers  have  not  yet  fallen  in  with 
this  scheme  and  they  are  paying  dearly  for 
their  indifference  and  neglect. 

I  would  suggest  that  as  soon  as  possible 
after  becoming  settled  in  your  new  home  you 
apply  for  membership  in  some  of  the  farm 
organizations  in  your  locality.  These  splen- 
did societies  probably  have  accomplished 
more  toward  lifting  agriculture  to  a  higher 
plane  than  any  other  single  agency.  They 
are  made  up  of  public  -  spirited  men  and 
women  who  proceed  on  the  theory  that  the 
best  way  to  help  themselves  is  to  help  one 
another.  They  have  constantly  driven  home 
the  truth  that  farming  is  a  business  and 
that  a  business  man  who  doesn't  keep  an 

accurate  set  of  books  is  headed  for  ruin. 

77 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

There  is  yet  a  fine  field  for  missionary  work 
in  this  direction.  Thousands  of  unprofit- 
able cows  are  maintained  simply  because 
their  owners  decline  to  go  to  the  trouble 
of  figuring  up  the  cost  of  each  cow's  feed 
and  balancing  it  against  the  milk  returns. 
A  system  of  accounts,  however  simple  it 
may  be,  is  imperative,  if  you  hope  to  make 
headway.  Probably  the  most  fatal  mis- 
take of  the  many  mistakes  made  by  feeders 
is  the  very  common  one  of  letting  hogs  and 
cattle  eat  up  the  profits  while  they  are  being 
fattened  for  market.  It  isn't  the  price  you 
get,  nor  the  quality  of  the  stock  you  have  for 
market,  which  determines  how  much  profit 
you  make.  It  is  the  difference  between  your 
selling  price  and  the  cost  of  feeding  that 
must  be  watched  with  the  utmost  care. 
How  are  you  going  to  do  this  by  trying  to 
keep  books  in  your  head  or  keeping  no  books 
at  all? 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  marketing  of 
their  products  is  among  the  biggest  prob- 
lems that  the  farmers  have  to  face  to-day. 
Until  comparatively  recent  years,  unor- 
ganized themselves,  they  have  had  to  con- 
tend with  every  conceivable  sort  of  organi- 
zation among  those  who  handle  their  wares. 
It  has  been  a  stupendous  task  to  form  them 
7S 


EDUCATION  AND  CO-OPERATION 

into  workable  business-like  associations.  The 
average  farmer  has  no  time  to  retail  his 
products,  and  when  his  home  markets  can- 
not absorb  all  of  his  output  he  must  ship 
to  distant  cities.  While  many  striking  cases 
have  proved  that,  too  often,  there  have  been 
betrayals  of  trust  on  the  part  of  the  city 
dealers,  it  is  doubtful  if  it  can  be  demon- 
strated that  all  the  shortcomings  of  the 
commission  business  as  now  conducted  are 
the  fault  of  the  commission  merchant.  A 
government  report  reminds  us  that  in  com- 
mission transactions  the  farmer  who  makes 
the  shipment  is  the  principal,  and  the  com- 
mission merchant  is  his  agent  in  an  implied 
contract  based  upon  the  ordinary  charges 
and  practices  of  the  commission  business. 
In  all  contracts  each  party  has  certain  rights 
and  certain  duties,  and  unless  one  of  the 
parties  performs  all  of  his  duties  he  has  no 
right  to  blame  the  other  party  for  a  failure 
to  secure  the  best  results.  The  failure  on 
the  part  of  both  parties  to  post  themselves 
as  to  their  respective  duties  leads  to  most 
of  the  trouble.  I  believe  the  problem  can 
be  solved  in  a  manner  that  will  redound  to 
the  interests  of  all  concerned.  What  the 
common-sense  farmers  are  trying  to  bring 

about  is  a  sane  practical  solution  of  their 
79 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

ills  in  marketing,  not  by  any  revolutionary 
movement,  but  through  better  business 
methods,  a  clearing  away  of  misunderstand- 
ings, and  the  elimination  of  the  crooked 
middlemen.  The  commission  merchants  are 
dependent  upon  the  farmer,  and  many  of  the 
farmers  are  dependent,  more  or  less,  upon 
the  commission  merchants.  There  is  no 
occasion  for  pessimism.  The  chief  fault 
hitherto  has  been  that  the  farmers  have  not 
co-operated  wisely  at  the  producing  end. 
Most  of  the  pulling  together  has  been  at  the 
receiving  end.  We  are  learning  this  lesson 
now,  and  I  look  for  a  gradual  change  for  the 
better.  The  consumer,  pinched  by  soaring 
prices,  has  at  last  been  aroused  to  action, 
with  the  result  that  many  movements  have 
been  launched  in  an  effort  to  bring  the  city- 
dwellers  into  closer  touch  with  the  farmers 
through  co-operative  markets  and  direct  sell- 
ing plans. 

Rural  express  routes,  that  transportation 
over  the  highways  by  motor  trucks,  connect- 
ing rural  America  with  the  rest  of  the  coun- 
try, are  spreading  rapidly  and  are  proving 
of  incalculable  benefit  to  the  farmer  in  help- 
ing him  to  solve  his  marketing  problems. 
Individual  lines,  operating  from  fifteen  to 

one  hundred  miles,  are  gradually  forming 
80 


EDUCATION  AND  CO-OPERATION 

into  a  system  which,  when  linked  up,  will 
reach  to  all  parts  of  the  nation. 

Let  me  give  an  illustration  of  how  these 
freight-carrying  automobiles  are  aiding  the 
food-producers  and,  incidentally,  returning  a 
good  profit  to  the  owners  of  the  vehicles: 
One  of  the  companies  operating  out  of  Cleve- 
land to  Sandusky  on  the  west  and  to  Ashta- 
bula on  the  east,  taking  in  all  way  stations, 
has  six  ten-ton  trucks.  The  first  spring  the 
company  developed  a  large  business  handling 
hot-house  vegetables.  When  fruits  and  gar- 
den vegetables  began  to  come  in  these  trucks 
transported  twenty  thousand  crates  of  ber- 
ries, twenty-five  thousand  bushels  of  toma- 
toes, and  twenty  thousand  bushels  of  apples, 
peaches,  and  beans.  During  the  grape  season 
the  same  concern  hauled  eighty-four  thou- 
sand baskets  of  grapes.  Seven  hundred 
baskets  to  the  load  were  carried.  The  aver- 
age haulage  distance  was  thirty-seven  miles, 
the  charge  was  about  seven  dollars  a  ton, 
and  the  average  load  was  seven  tons. 

The  farmers  are  becoming  educated  to  the 
advantage  of  the  service,  and  it  is  sure  to 
grow  in  popularity  and  usefulness.  Most  of 
the  lines  are  not  in  competition  with  the  rail- 
roads, but  reach  sections  that  have  never  been 
served  except  by  horse  and  wagon.     Where 

81 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

they  do  compete,  however,  it  has  been  found 
that  there  is  business  enough  for  both.  Rural 
motor  express  routes,  being  a  war  innovation, 
coming  after  the  fashion  of  other  necessities, 
are  here  to  stay  and  do  their  part  in  feeding 
the  world  and  in  building  a  greater  America. 
If  the  beginner  is  so  situated  that  he 
must  dispose  of  his  products  through  the 
middlemen,  it  would  be  well  to  make  in- 
quiries as  to  some  reputable  firm  and  es- 
tablish a  connection  with  it.  Play  fair  and 
square  at  all  times.  Have  a  trade-mark 
and  let  not  a  barrel  of  apples  or  a  crate  of 
tomatoes  or  a  bag  of  potatoes  go  to  mar- 
ket that  is  not  exactly  as  represented.  Let 
the  apples  or  potatoes  in  the  middle  of  the 
barrel  be  as  sound  and  smooth  as  those  at 
either  end.  It  won't  be  long  before  your 
commission  man  will  be  calling  for  your 
products  in  preference  to  some  others  that 
have  to  be  scrutinized.  When  he  gets  your 
"xyz"  goods  he  and  his  customers  will  know 
just  where  they  stand.  You  will  find  pretty 
soon  that  the  "xyz"  produce  will  command 
prices  higher  than  the  prevailing  quotations. 
Honesty  is  just  as  good  a  policy  now  as  it 
ever  was.  The  big  farmers  have  not  climbed 
to  the  top  of  the  ladder  by  "cute  little 
tricks"  and  sharp  practice. 

82 


WOMEN   FARMERS 

AN  interesting  and  important  feature  of 
>>  agriculture,  particularly  since  the  out- 
break of  the  world  war  in  1914,  is  the  re- 
markably large  number  of  successful  women 
farmers  to  be  seen  in  all  parts  of  the  country. 
Woman,  as  a  helpmate  of  man,  has  from 
time  immemorial  played  a  most  vital,  if 
somewhat  inconspicuous,  part  in  agriculture, 
but  her  labors  hitherto  have  been  confined 
more  to  the  home  in  the  rearing  of  children 
and  ministering  to  the  comforts  of  her  hus- 
band, sons,  or  brothers.  During  the  war  the 
supply  of  food  was  far  below  the  world's 
needs,  and  the  urgent  demand  gave  a  stimulus 
to  farming  such  as  had  never  been  known 
before.  Thousands  of  women,  who  up  to 
that  time  had  not  given  agriculture  a  thought 
as  an  occupation  for  themselves,  patriotically 
donned  overalls  and  joined  the  ranks  of  the 

83 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

tillers  of  the  soil.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  their  experience  thus  gained  during  our 
national  crisis  instilled  a  love  for  the  land 
that  will  cause  many  of  them  to  take  up 
farming  permanently  as  a  means  of  liveli- 
hood. As  the  highest  success  in  our  occupa- 
tion is  based  upon  good  management,  and  as 
women  have  demonstrated  a  capacity  for 
sound  business  methods  in  many  walks  of 
life,  there  would  seem  to  be  no  reason  why 
they  should  not  make  good  farmers.  In 
fact,  there  already  were  hundreds  of  them 
conducting  prosperous  farms  long  before  the 
war,  attracting  no  more  than  passing  notice. 
But  when  America  entered  the  conflict  and 
it  became  imperative  that  every  possible 
ounce  of  energy  be  put  into  food  production, 
women  farm-workers  were  recruited  in  vast 
numbers,  and  they  furnished  another  forcible 
illustration  of  their  ability  to  take  their 
places  as  the  equal  of  man  in  our  daily 
activities. 

Two  or  three  years  ago  the  late  George 
C.  Horwitz,  a  prominent  attorney  of  Phila- 
delphia, purchased  a  large  tract  of  land  in 
the  Everglades  of  Florida.  He  started  to  de- 
velop the  property,  when  his  death  stopped 
the  work.  The  cessation,  however,  was  only 
temporary.    His  wife  decided  that  she  could 

84 


WOMEN  FARMERS 

carry  it  on,  and  to-day  she  has  more  than 
two  thousand  acres  under  cultivation.  This 
farming  on  such  a  vast  scale  is  not  done  by 
proxy,  but  under  Mrs.  Horwitz's  personal 
supervision  and  according  to  her  own  ideas. 
Her  foremen  work  directly  under  her  leader- 
ship. Personally  she  directs  the  work  in  the 
fields,  personally  she  plans  the  crops,  super- 
intends their  planting,  oversees  the  harvest- 
ing, and  handles  their  marketing.  As  the 
largest  individual  developer  of  land  in  the 
Everglades  she  is  leading  the  way  in  open- 
ing up  one  of  the  last  "new"  farming  sections 
of  the  country.  In  two  years  Mrs.  Horwitz 
has  carved  out  of  that  wilderness,  where  six 
feet  of  the  richest  muck  soil  in  the  world 
insures  enormous  crops  without  fertilizer, 
between  two  thousand  and  three  thousand 
acres  of  tillable  land.  Huge  tractors  are 
pulling  plows  through  that  black  soil  which 
had  been  buried  for  centuries  under  the 
matted  jungle.  Hundreds  of  men  are  on 
her  pay-roll.  Scores  of  farm  buildings  have 
been  erected.  Large  acreages  are  fenced, 
hundreds  of  hogs  are  running  on  pasture, 
cattle  and  horses  are  grazing  in  other  fields, 
and  everywhere  may  be  seen  the  results  of 
a  woman's  wonderful  energy. 

The   story   of   Mrs.    Fannie   Klinck  and 
7  85 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

her  two-hundred-acre  farm  near  Clarksville, 
Iowa,  should  be  an  inspiration  to  every 
woman  with  a  longing  for  the  soil.  She  was 
born  in  a  log  cabin  on  the  farm  she  now 
owns  and  operates  herself.  Mrs.  Klinck  has 
been  styled  "the  most  self-reliant  woman  in 
the  world."  During  the  war,  when  it  be- 
came every  one's  duty  to  serve  under  the 
colors,  whether  at  home  or  in  the  trenches 
abroad,  Mrs.  Klinck,  although  she  could 
have  well  afforded  to  retire  if  it  had  been  a 
mere  question  of  money,  did  all  the  work 
with  her  own  hands  of  her  two-hundred- 
acre  farm.  "My  hardest  job  was  plowing 
the  garden,"  she  said.  "To  pull  the  walking- 
plow  back  into  the  corners  and  plow  close 
to  the  apple-trees  without  letting  the  whiffle- 
tree  bark  them  is  not  so  easy  as  it  looks,  but 
I  did  it,  and  I  never  swore  nor  jerked  the 
horses,  either."  Mrs.  Klinck  was  the  first 
woman  in  the  United  States  to  win  the  grand 
champion  sweepstakes  for  the  best  individual 
exhibit  at  any  state  fair. 

Ethel  Lynberg,  fifteen  years  of  age,  who 
lives  in  Salt  Lake  County,  Utah,  received 
the  four-leaf-clover  medal  which  is  awarded 
the  members  of  the  boys'  and  girls'  agri- 
cultural clubs  who  for  four  consecutive  years 
have  done  successful  work.    In  one  season, 


WOMEN  FARMERS 

besides  attending  high  school,  Ethel  plowed 
sixty  acres  and  harrowed  and  leveled  it  for 
wheat,  alfalfa,  and  beets.  She  also  assisted 
with  the  irrigation,  in  her  father's  absence, 
turning  the  water  on  and  off  alone.  She 
canned  660  quarts  of  fruit  and  vegetables 
and  dried  many  pounds.  One  hundred 
chickens  grew  to  maturity  one  summer  un- 
der her  care. 

One  of  the  biggest  hog-producing  farms  in 
Missouri  is  owned  and  operated  by  Miss 
Pearl  Mitchell,  who  took  up  the  work  upon 
the  death  of  her  father.  It  is  said  that  when 
Miss  Mitchell  wants  a  new  diamond  ring  she 
raises  an  extra  hog.  In  the  East  Mrs.  Helen 
Ware  has  achieved  a  remarkable  success  with 
her  dairy-farm  in  Massachusetts,  and  Mrs. 
Ehrmann,  with  her  big  olive-grove  in  Cali- 
fornia, has  shown  the  men  out  there  that  a 
woman  can  be  just  as  efficient  a  farmer  as 
any  man. 

One  of  the  most  successful  farmers  in  our 
neighborhood  is  a  young  woman  who  taught 
the  rural  school  near  her  home  for  a  few 
years  while  she  was  building  up  her  poultry 
and  bee  plant.  From  a  modest  beginning 
she  has  a  business  that  is  growing  rapidly, 
and  her  net  profits  would  compare  very 
favorably  with  some  of  the  larger  farms  con- 

87 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

ducted  by  men  in  the  community.  This  girl 
started  out  with  no  more  capital  than  love 
of  her  work,  an  indomitable  determination, 
and  a  level  head. 

Times  and  conditions  change.  Women  of 
ambition  and  brains  will  not  be  content  to 
spend  their  lives  as  household  drudges.  Nor 
is  it  necessary  or  desirable.  None  of  their 
womanly  charm  is  lost  under  the  new  order. 
They  are  none  the  less  women  in  getting 
out  and  doing  big  things.  A  few  years  ago 
a  man,  who  lived  on  a  small  farm  in  the  val- 
ley just  below  our  home,  disappeared,  leav- 
ing his  wife  and  three  children  to  shift  for 
themselves.  He  was  a  worthless  sort  of  a 
fellow,  and,  but  for  the  thought  that  his 
family  might  suffer  because  of  his  absence, 
most  of  us  would  have  been  pleased  that  the 
neighborhood  was  rid  of  him.  Did  that 
brave  little  woman  appeal  to  her  relatives 
or  to  the  county  board  for  charity,  which  she 
might  have  felt  amply  justified  in  doing? 
Not  a  bit  of  it.  She  and  the  older  boy  took 
charge  of  the  farm,  doing  all  the  work  them- 
selves on  twenty-five  acres  and  milking  half 
a  dozen  cows.  The  smaller  children  were 
kept  in  school.  They  have  just  passed  on 
their  way  home,  rosy-cheeked  and  warmly 
clad,  too  young  yet  to  realize  the  sacrifices 

88 


WOMEN  FARMERS 

that  the  mother  is  making  for  them  or  to 
understand  the  struggles  she  has  cheerfully 
endured  for  their  sake.  This  woman  is  pay- 
ing off  the  mortgage  that  her  husband  placed 
on  the  farm.  Her  cows  and  horses  are  in 
good  condition,  and  there  is  no  better  tilled 
land  nor  a  more  attractive  little  home  in  all 
the  countryside. 

The  use  of  farm  machinery  is  relieving  the 
farms  of  the  heavy  toil  of  the  old  days,  ren- 
dering it  possible  for  many  women  to  engage 
in  agriculture  who  otherwise  would  be  barred. 
The  tractor  transforms  work  into  fun,  and 
with  the  hundreds  of  modern  appliances  the 
farm  will  make  an  ever-increasing  appeal  to 
the  woman  of  intelligence  and  ambition. 
What  the  farm  needs  to-day  is  enthusiasm. 
There  are  too  many  eking  out  an  existence 
on  the  farms  just  as  there  are  persons  eking 
out  an  existence  in  the  cities.  These  men 
seem  to  have  an  idea  that  Providence  set 
them  out  here  and  that  here  they  must  stay. 
If  they  make  both  ends  meet  they  apparently 
feel  that  their  duty  has  been  done.  They 
have  no  liking  for  farm  work;  maybe  some 
of  them  would  not  enjoy  any  sort  of  work, 
but  they  are  failures  on  the  farm  because 
they  lack  the  dynamic  force  of  enthusiasm. 
The  women  are  bringing  that  mighty  power 

89 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

into  agriculture,  and  they  have  set  a  pace 
for  the  sterner  sex  that  is  quickening  with 
every  passing  year.  The  women  have  caught 
the  true  spirit  of  the  farm.  They  are  always 
pushing  ahead,  trying  new  things,  and  doing 
the  old  things  better  than  any  man  has  ever 
been  able  to  do  them. 


XI 

WORK  OF  THE   FARM 

THE  only  key  that  will  unlock  the  treas- 
ures of  the  land  is  steady,  hard,  intelli- 
gent labor,  and  a  man  who  is  unwilling  to 
roll  up  his  sleeves  and  soil  his  hands  had 
best  stay  away  from  the  farm.  Compared 
with  city  labor,  I  believe  that  farm  work  is 
not  nearly  so  hard.  The  actual  hours  are 
longer  than  the  average  city  occupation,  but 
the  absence  of  tension  and  bustle  and  hurry 
that  kill  so  many  in  the  cities  makes  the 
farmer's  labors  far  less  wearing  and  irksome. 
There  are  some  men  living  on  farms  who 
manage  to  get  along  with  a  minimum  of 
exertion.  They  are  known  as  the  "  Peter 
Tumbledowns"  of  agriculture.  Their  build- 
ings are  run  down,  their  stock  is  ill-kept  and 
scrawny,  and  their  land  is  poor  and  starving. 
Many  years  ago  in  the  South  I  used  to  see 
these  men  lolling  about  in  the  shade  in  sum- 
mer and  dozing  at  the  fireside  in  winter, 
91 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

I  see  a  few  of  them  even  to-day  in  New  Eng- 
land. If  a  man  has  no  higher  aspiration 
than  simply  to  get  enough  to  eat,  I  believe 
the  farm  offers  him  his  greatest  opportunity. 
Fortunately  for  our  country,  this  class  of 
men  is  the  rare  exception  and  not  the  rule. 
While  one  may  live  with  little  work  in  the 
country  and  go  through  life  as  ignorant  and 
free  of  thought  as  the  plow  he  follows — that 
is,  when  he  can  summon  enough  energy  to 
do  any  plowing — I  would  not  give  the  im- 
pression that  agriculture  is  a  lazy  man's 
calling.  Very  few  of  us  want  to  be  "  Peter 
Tumbledowns."  Our  occupation  demands 
constant  and  varied  mental  exercise  as  well 
as  properly  applied  physical  toil,  and  what- 
ever inequality  of  results  we  may  see  on 
every  hand  is  in  large  measure  the  inequality 
of  intelligent  labor  put  into  the  work. 

We  have  a  " Peter  Tumbledown"  living 
a  few  houses  away  on  the  road  to  the  city. 
They  were  twitting  him  one  day  about  his 
potato  crop. 

"I  don't  see  how  you  expect  to  get  any 
potatoes  out  of  this  patch,"  said  one  of 
"Peter's"  callers,  pointing  to  the  weeds  and 
grass  that  had  overgrown  a  few  straggling 
potato-vines.  "You  admit  that  the  plant- 
ing was  poorly  done,  don't  you?" 
92 


WORK  OF  THE  FARM 

"Well,  yes,"  replied  "Peter,"  "maybe  I 
could  have  done  a  better  job  with  the 
planting." 

"They  haven't  had  any  cultivation  to 
mention,  you  will  admit  that,  too,  won't 
you?"  persisted  the  wag. 

"Oh  yes,  I'll  admit  all  that,"  rejoined 
"Peter,"  "but  don't  forget  that  I  am  going 
to  give  them  a  devil  of  a  digging." 

Spasmodic  work  of  that  kind  is  as  value- 
less on  the  farm  as  it  is  anywhere  else.  I 
heard  of  a  man  whose  only  objection  to 
alfalfa  hay  was  that  "the  darned  stuff  had 
to  be  cut  so  often,"  and  just  at  a  time  when 
he  was  busy  with  his  "regular  farm  work." 
He  was  accustomed  to  mowing  his  timothy 
lot  once  a  season.  When  the  neighbors  be- 
gan to  grow  alfalfa,  that  gave  three  or  four 
cuttings  a  year,  they  could  not  get  him  in- 
terested at  all. 

In  bringing  this  little  volume  to  a  close 
I  want  to  say  that  I  am  not  one  of  those  who 
are  alarmed  at  the  drift  cityward  of  the 
rural  population.  The  great  cities  will  con- 
tinue to  grow,  but  the  soil  will  remain  while 
man  is  on  the  earth.  What  the  farms  need 
is  not  so  many  more  farmers,  but  better 
farmers,  and  some  of  the  best  farmers  we 

have  to-day  are  men  who  have  come  out 
93 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

from  the  cities.  There  is  no  question  that 
this  vast  country  can  easily  support  a  popu- 
lation many  times  as  large  as  it  is  at  present. 
The  single  state  of  Texas  has  an  area  as 
large  as  the  German  Empire  as  it  existed 
before  the  war.  Those  who  quit  the  farms 
for  commercial  and  industrial  occupations 
will  leave  behind  the  more  efficient  tillers  of 
the  land,  and  in  turn  the  number  of  farmers 
who  remain  will  be  gradually  augmented  by 
the  lesser  flow  back  from  the  congested 
centers.  The  farmer  of  the  future  will  pro- 
duce treble  or  quadruple  what  he  is  pro- 
ducing to-day.  There  is  no  occasion  for  an 
indiscriminate  scramble  "back  to  the  land." 
The  government  agencies,  the  agricultural 
colleges,  and  the  farm  journals  are  interest- 
ing themselves  not  so  much  in  getting  a 
large  number  of  people  from  the  cities  to  go 
to  the  farms  as  they  are  in  making  better 
farmers  of  the  men  who  are  already  on  the 
land.  When  men  do  come  out  from  the 
city  we  want  those  who  can  bring  intelli- 
gence and  enthusiasm  into  their  new  occu- 
pation. 

As  agriculture  grows  in  efficiency  the 
farmers  will  make  their  homes  more  attrac- 
tive, rural  citizenship  itself  will  be  elevated, 
and  there  will  come  an  automatic  adjust- 

94 


WORK  OF  THE  FARM 

ment  of  the  balance  of  population.  It  is 
not  to  be  supposed  that  all  the  progress  of 
the  future  will  be  with  respect  to  the  farm- 
ing communities.  The  conditions  of  the  in- 
dustrial workers  are  constantly  being  im- 
proved. The  great  problem  of  capital  and 
labor  will  yet  be  solved.  In  time  city  life 
will  be  shorn  of  its  extreme  poverty  and 
suffering  among  the  poor.  There  will  be  less 
incentive  to  change  from  one  occupation  to 
another. 

In  conclusion  I  repeat  that  there  are  mar- 
velous opportunities  to-day  on  the  farm  for 
the  city  man  who  has  a  genuine  love  for  the 
soil,  coupled  with  the  physical  strength  and 
the  temperament  to  persevere  in  the  face 
of  obstacles  the  beginner  must  expect  at 
the  start.  I  have  sought  to  draw  a  rough 
outline  of  the  difficulties  you  are  likely  to 
encounter;  at  the  same  time  I  have  en- 
deavored to  recount  briefly  why  we  farmers 
are  the  happiest  men  in  the  world.  Of 
course,  many  farmers  are  chronic  grumblers 
and  would  not  admit  they  were  well  off  if 
they  knew  in  their  hearts  they  were.  Others 
have  had  a  pretty  hard  row  to  hoe.  It  is 
no  Paradise  out  here.  We  are  just  plain, 
every-day  people,  working  hard  for  a  living, 
just  as  millions  all  over  the  world  are  do- 

95 


OPPORTUNITIES  IN  FARMING 

ing  and  will  continue  to  do  until  the  end  of 
time.  But  I  feel  that  we  are  getting  more 
out  of  our  work  than  the  average  man  in  any 
other  calling.  As  our  soil  is  brought  up  from 
eighty  bushels  of  potatoes  to  the  acre  to  one 
hundred  and  two  hundred  and  three  hundred, 
as  our  scrub  cattle  give  way  to  pure-breds, 
as  we  restore  the  fertility  of  our  cotton  and 
corn  and  wheat  lands  to  the  yields  of  other 
years  when  the  soil  was  new  and  vigorous, 
there  comes  that  sweet  satisfaction  in  a 
worthy  task  well  performed  that  all  the 
wealth  of  Wall  Street  could  never  bring.  It 
is  a  source  of  deep  gratification,  too,  to  know 
that  our  labor  is  appreciated,  that  it  counts 
for  something,  and  that  as  we  push  ahead 
we  are  carrying  the  whole  country  with  us. 
For  surely  none  can  have  failed  to  notice 
that  nations  have  advanced  in  material 
strength,  moral  worth,  in  a  healthy  citizen- 
ship and  all  that  constitutes  the  glory  of 
mankind,  about  in  ratio  to  their  attachment 
to  the  land,  and  that,  on  the  other  hand, 
they  have  become  weak  and  degraded  and 
melted  away  as  they  have  undervalued  and 
neglected  the  first  pursuit  of  man.  One  of 
the  surest  indications  of  the  future  prosperity 
and  power  of  our  great  country  is  the  marked 
tendency  in  late  years  to  place  a  higher 

96 


WORK  OF  THE  FARM 

estimate  upon  agricultural  pursuits.  Our 
national  government  and  the  various  states 
are  leaving  no  stone  unturned  in  their  efforts 
to  see  that  fanning  keeps  pace  with  the  de- 
mands of  an  age  blazing  with  the  lights  of 
science  and  teeming  with  improvements  in 
every  department  of  life. 

We  really  haven't  begun  to  farm  in  this 
country  yet.  Golden  opportunities  are  at 
hand  for  the  men  and  women  who  are  willing 
to  relinquish  the  artificialities  of  the  city  and 
go  out  and  conquer  the  soil. 


THE   END 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  50  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.00  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


JUL  31  1937 


JUN  19  1946 


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